Where do the two languages of the bilingual child interact? The literature has debated whether bilingual children have delays in the acquisition of direct objects. The variety of methods and languages involved have prevented clear conclusions. In a transitivity-based approach, null objects are a default structural possibility, present in all…

Examines whether bilingual children can differentiate their languages with respect to the ability to form compound nouns and to test the validity of previous explanations of the acquisition of compounds. Focused on whether a bilingual French-English child could differentiate between two compounding rules for nouns in the two languages. (Author/VWL)

This paper investigates object omission in French longitudinal production from two English-speaking children (Lightbown, 1977). Similar patterns of object omission are observed: direct objects start being dropped as transitive verbs are emerging and licit and illicit null objects occur in all recordings thereafter. Moreover, the incidence of…

Reports on bilingual acquisition of syntax. Draws on data from a bilingual English-Dutch child whose word order patterns testify to the fact that movement never occurs beyond the target and when deviant word orders are attested they result from lack of raising. (Author/VWL)

Investigates mixed early two-word utterances by bilinguals to determine whether function words match the language context less frequently than content words. Data collected from two language contexts from a child acquiring English and Spanish from birth were used to identify those two-word utterances occurring in the first 2 months of two-word…

Investigates whether the aspect-before-tense hypothesis accounts for the acquisition of tense-aspect morphology in child second language English. Addressed whether early uses of tense-aspect inflections can be analyzed as a spell-out of semantic/aspectual features of verbs. Data are from a longitudinal study of an 8-year-old Russian-speaking child…