Transferencia lingüística en la adquisición bilingüe simultánea del español e inglés

Abstract

It has been argued that; after the early stages; the two linguistic system of the bilingual undergo psychological separation; following developmental patterns similar to those of monolingual children. Experimental studies; however; have shown that many bilingual children display strong interference from the dominant language into the weaker; suggesting that the concept of transfer can be used to explore the complex interaction that exists between the languages coexisting in the bilingual brain. This paper; through the analysis of data collected from a bilingual Spanish-English speaking child; examines what kinds of transfer can take place; at a time when language differentiation is supposed to have occurred. In particular it challenges the claim that bilingual children follow the same developmental route of acquisition in both their languages as monolingual do in their respective languages.