Bilingual First Language Acquisition
Published on 17. February 2009
Book
Hardback
432 pages
978-1-84769-149-1 (ISBN)
Description
A comprehensive textbook on bilingual language acquisition.
Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This comprehensive textbook explains how children learn to understand and speak those languages.
It brings together both established knowledge and the latest findings about different areas of bilingual language development. It also includes new analyses of previously published materials. The book describes how bilingually raised children learn to understand and use sounds, words and sentences in two languages.
A recurrent theme is the large degree of variation between bilingual children. This variation in how children develop bilingually reflects the variation in their language learning environments. Positive attitudes from the people in bilingual children's language learning environments and their recognition that child bilingualism is not monolingualism-times-two are the main ingredients ensuring that children grow up to be happy and expert speakers of two languages.
Increasingly, children grow up hearing two languages from birth. This comprehensive textbook explains how children learn to understand and speak those languages.
It brings together both established knowledge and the latest findings about different areas of bilingual language development. It also includes new analyses of previously published materials. The book describes how bilingually raised children learn to understand and use sounds, words and sentences in two languages.
A recurrent theme is the large degree of variation between bilingual children. This variation in how children develop bilingually reflects the variation in their language learning environments. Positive attitudes from the people in bilingual children's language learning environments and their recognition that child bilingualism is not monolingualism-times-two are the main ingredients ensuring that children grow up to be happy and expert speakers of two languages.
Reviews / Votes
This book has everything the student needs. The survey of the literature is thorough and each study is related to the core "big issues" of language balance, language differentiation, lexical overlap, and language interaction. De Houwer explains in detail the use of important tools such as auditory preference measures, the Communicative Development Inventory, and the CHILDES bilingual database in ways that will allow the student to begin real research projects. The exposition is crowned by a final chapter on what it means for two languages to exist harmoniously in the young bilingual. This is a masterful introduction to one of the fastest growing areas in language studies. -- Brian MacWhinney, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, USA The study of bilingual first language acquisition has truly come of age with the publication of a first textbook devoted to this fascinating topic. De Houwer's highly readable volume is both comprehensive and stimulating in its presentation of various aspects of bilingual language development - a must-read for students embarking on this field of research. -- Elizabeth Lanza, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, Norway A timely contribution to a field gradually coming into its own, this is the first textbook to focus on bilingual first-language eLl) acquisition. With its userfriendly presentation, this volume should be accessible to an interdisciplinary readership and could help to popularize the field. -- Virginia Yip, Chinese University of Hong Kong * Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Volume 32, Number 3, September 2010 *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Bristol
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Channel View Publications Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
1134 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84769-149-1 (9781847691491)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Annick de Houwer
Bilingual First Language Acquisition
Book
02/2009
Multilingual Matters
€44.00
Shipment within 10-20 days
Person
Annick De Houwer has recently been appointed as Chair of Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Erfurt in Germany. She is also the new Director of the Language Center there. In addition, Professor De Houwer holds the title of Collaborative Investigator to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.A.). Her PhD was based on a dissertation on bilingual acquisition, a topic she has since continued to work on steadily. Her book The Acquisition of Two Languages from Birth (CUP, 1990) is widely cited in the bilingual acquisition literature. Dr. De Houwer has also published on Dutch child language, attitudes towards child language, teen language, and intralingual subtitling. She has extensive editorial experience.
Content
Chapter 1 Introducing Bilingual First Language Acquisition
Chapter 2 Bilingual Children's Language Development: An Overview
Chapter 3 Research Methods in BFLA
Chapter 4 Socializing Environments and BLFA
Chapter 5 Sounds in BFLA
Chapter 6 Words in BFLA
Chapter 7 Sentences in BFLA
Chapter 8 Harmonious Bilingual Development
Chapter 2 Bilingual Children's Language Development: An Overview
Chapter 3 Research Methods in BFLA
Chapter 4 Socializing Environments and BLFA
Chapter 5 Sounds in BFLA
Chapter 6 Words in BFLA
Chapter 7 Sentences in BFLA
Chapter 8 Harmonious Bilingual Development