Ninth Heritage Language Research Institute

Go back to abstract list

Bilingual Language Acquisition à la Jackson Pollock

This tutorial will serve as an overview of the field of child bilingual language acquisition in the recent years (2010-present) and of the methods used in it. First, I will survey the sources that cover major topics and issues (e.g., chapters, books, journals, special issues, and specialized conferences). Second, I will present practicalities relevant to the current state of the bilingual language acquisition (types of child bilingualism, well-studied and rare language pairs, active laboratories and researchers in the U.S. and Europe, main themes and challenges). Then I will focus on two approaches in investigating bilingual language acquisition: (1) comparing it with monolingual L1 acquisition in various language domains (e.g., phonology, vocabulary, morphosyntax, and narratives), and (2) studying bilingual-specific characteristics (input, code-switching, assessment, and implications for cognition). Finally, I will speculate on how we could use the methodological lessons from the field of child bilingual language acquisition to pursue a coherent and productive experimental research agenda with bilingual heritage language children.