Abstract
The brief episodes described above have given the reader an initial idea of the linguistic production of bilingual children. Examples such as these raise a series of questions. For instance, can bilingual children really manage to learn two different languages well? Or do they not give the impression of speaking less correctly than monolingual children? Doesn’t learning two languages require such an enormous effort that language acquisition is retarded? Is merely speaking with the child in both languages enough to enable him to achieve bilingualism easily? In a different vein: How will the child’s monolingual playmates react? Will they reject or accept him?
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According to McLaughlin (1978, p. 9), a distinction can be made between the acquisition and the learning of a second language. In acquisition, both children and adults pick up the language through their natural environment, without necessarily having any formal instruction. Learning a second language, on the other hand, implies formal instruction, feedback, the correction of errors, and the teaching of rules in an artificial linguistic setting. Similarly, Schönpflug (1977) distinguishes between natural and guided acquisition of the two languages (gelenkter und natürlicher Zweitsprachenerwerb). However, these are both cases of consecutive bilingualism. In simultaneous bilingualism, we can distinguish between acquisition, which takes place during the first six or seven years of life, and learning, which begins when the child starts school.
Blumenau, the city under discussion, was founded in 1850 by German immigrants who kept their language for another century. But since the generation of the sixties, only a small minority of the children who start elementary school are bilingual or monolingual in German. Funke [1902] and Lenard [1970] have written two very interesting books on the customs, language and way of life of the Germans in southern Brazil.
Ochs tried [1979b] to standardize a transcription method for such recordings which would make it easier to compare the data gathered throughout the world. Ochs was assisted in this task by the works of Bloom et al. [1974], Reilly et al. [unpublished], Sachs et al. [1974], Ochs and Schieffelin [1979], and Scollon [1976].
Data was gathered until Lisa was 5 and Giulia 4. After that, data was gathered occasionally until the girls reached the ages of 8 and 9 respectively.
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© 1983 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Taeschner, T. (1983). An Overview of Research on Bilingualism. In: The Sun is Feminine. Springer Series in Language and Communication, vol 13. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48329-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-48329-5_1
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