Bilingual children’s repairs of breakdowns in communication

Liane Comeau · Fred H. Genesee · Morton J. Mendelson

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Language Development and Disorders Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies Child and Animal Learning Development

Abstract

This study examined two- (n = 10) and three-year-old (n = 16) French-English bilingual children's repairs of breakdowns in communication that occurred when they did not use the same language as their interlocutor (Language breakdowns) and for other reasons (e.g. inaudible utterance). The children played with an experimenter who used only one language (English or French) during the play session. Each time a child used the other language, the experimenter made up to five requests for clarification, from non-specific (What?) to specific (Can you say that in French/English?). The experimenter also made requests for clarification when breakdowns occurred for other reasons, e.g. the child spoke too softly, produced an ambiguous utterance, etc. Both the two- and three-year-olds were capable of repairing Language breakdowns by switching languages to match that of their experimenter and they avoided this repair strategy when attempting to repair Other breakdowns. Moreover, they switched languages in response to non-specific requests. The results indicate that even two-and-a-half-year-old bilingual children are capable of identifying their language choice as a cause of communication breakdowns and that they can differentiate Language from Other kinds of communication breakdowns.

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References

1992The CHILDES project: tools for analyzing talk 1995Language differentiation in early bilingual development 1997Language mixing in infant bilingualism : a sociolinguistic perspective 1990The acquisition of two languages from birth a case study 1996Bilingual Language Acquisition 1996Talking with strangers: A study of bilingual children's communicative competence 1992One Parent – One Language 2000Bilingual Acquisition : Theoretical Implications of a Case Study

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