Seminar Paper - from Helen Doron - Part 1

Does repeated listening to a Foreign Language create two separate phonological systems in monolingual 2-year-olds?

ABSTRACT

Paradis (2001) conducted a study the results of which indicate that bilingual two-year-olds have differentiated phonological systems, although there were crosslingual influences. The present study was designed along the lines of the study done by Paradis (2001) in order to examine whether monolingual two-year-old who have been systematically exposed to English on audiocassettes over about 9 to 12 months also develop differentiated phonological systems and whether these systems are autonomous. These children were named “Twolinguals”. Results indicate that the Twolinguals have differentiated but non-autonomous phonological systems. The discussion recommends repeating the study with a larger sample and also recommends the best way to receive the data from the children.

1. LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 The Unitary Language System hypothesis

There has been considerable interest over the past decades as to whether children who are bilingual from birth in terms of their exposure to two languages have one or two linguistic representations for their dual language input. The Unitary Language System (ULS) hypothesis (the name was so coined by Genesee, 1989) says that bilingual infants do indeed start with one representation which splits into two systems somewhere between the ages of two and three (Leopold 1949/1970; Redlinger and Park, 1980; Swain, 1972; Swain and Wesche, 1975; Toribio and Brown, 1995; Volterra & Taeschner, 1978; Vihman, 1985 – write of differentiation before age of two). Paradis (2001) points out that the results of research are varied in their support for ULS. Some researchers have found two year olds' phonological systems to be totally undifferentiated (Celce-Murcia, 1978; Leopold, 1949/1971; Vogel, 1975). Other researchers have found partial differentiation (Deuchar & Clark, 1996; Schnitzer and Krasinski, 1994), and other have found different phonological systems at or before the age of two (Ingram 1981/2; Johnson and Lancaster, 1998; Paradis, 1996; Schnitzer and Krasinski, 1996). Paradis (2001) suggests that the difference in results is by:

1. Cross-linguistic similarities in syllabic and segmental knowledge and also confusion in the research models between phonological issues that are relevant to two-year-old children and those that are relevant at a later age;
2. All prior research having been based on single case studies, making cross-study generalizations difficult;
3. The absence of systematic and scientific comparisons with monolingual children of the same age.