Abstract
In a simultaneous bilingual education, there are many factors that can affect its success, primarily the age of the child and socio-cognitive elements. This phenomenon can be initially studied in the first lexical productions of either language in a child. The present study focuses on the early lexical developments of a child, who lives in the monolingual society of Iran, where there is no linguistic milieu for French, and has been exposed to a bilingual education since birth. Applying Ronjat’s principle of “one parent-one language” (1913), the parents have formed the child’s basic linguistic interactions; the father employs Farsi in his interactions with the child as his mother tongue while the mother uses French as her foreign language. The data is collected from audio files recorded in the period between 18 and 36 months old of the child, containing her everyday interactions with her parents. Through the analysis of the data with the purpose of studying the changes of the presence of the minority language words, i.e. French, in the child’s sentences at different ages, questions are raised regarding the conditions of a persistent presence of both languages and the reason due to which one language positions as a minor means of communication, observing parental attitudes and environmental issues that can influence the language acquisition procedure.
Highlights
1.1 Introduction to the ProblemAs a phenomenon that occurs through communication, language acquisition contains sociolinguistic and socio-cognitive processes as well as acquiring lexical and structural systems of a language
Padilla and Lindholm (1984) define simultaneous bilingualism as bilingualism where the acquisition begins from the birth of a child while McLaughlin (1984) believes that any point before the age of three years old would qualify as the acquisition starting point
25-28 months: Despite maternal attitudes that carry the particular trend in the minority language, Elena is well accustomed to the nursery and is impressed with the entertaining activities in company of other children of her age; the results show a lexical explosion in Farsi; extra educational tools for French were stopped, it was remarkable that the competence of Elena in French lessens towards a passive skill, she understands her mother’s words but she responds in Farsi
Summary
As a phenomenon that occurs through communication, language acquisition contains sociolinguistic and socio-cognitive processes as well as acquiring lexical and structural systems of a language. Bilingualism is a family, social, and cultural phenomenon since it engages a position in families and societies. This study investigates the kind of bilingualism which concerns child’s linguistic developments in pre-school ages, called “early bilingualism”, from various aspects. Provided that two languages are acquired simultaneously or with a short gap, the phenomenon is called “early simultaneous bilingualism”. Padilla and Lindholm (1984) define simultaneous bilingualism as bilingualism where the acquisition begins from the birth of a child while McLaughlin (1984) believes that any point before the age of three years old would qualify as the acquisition starting point Provided that two languages are acquired simultaneously or with a short gap, the phenomenon is called “early simultaneous bilingualism”. Padilla and Lindholm (1984) define simultaneous bilingualism as bilingualism where the acquisition begins from the birth of a child while McLaughlin (1984) believes that any point before the age of three years old would qualify as the acquisition starting point
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