The Development of Postverbal Negation in Korean in a Korean-English Bilingual Child

Abstract

This study investigates the developmental process of Korean postverbal negation in a Korean-English bilingual child. The purposes of this study are firstly to find both common and divergent paths in the development of Korean postverbal negation in terms of both syntactic development and pragmatic uses of postverbal negation; and secondly to investigate explanations for the special pattern of development observed. The data were collected from one bilingual child (R) who is simultaneously acquiring two languages, Korean and English over two years between the ages of 5;00 and 700 (years; months). The data collection was carried out in four periods in two different environments: Periods Ⅰ and Ⅲ in Australia, Periods Ⅱ and Ⅳ in Korea. The development of postverbal negation showed that when R was in Australia, she employed both L1 and L2 learning mechanisms, while when she was in Korea, she employed L1 learning mechanisms. The results reveal that L1 and L2 mechanisms are not basically different because R shows both forward and backward developmental features in conjunction with the two different language environments: Korea and Australia.