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16 Bilingualism and Aphasia

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Bilingualism and Second Language Learning


T K Bhatia, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA lingualism different from late bilingualism? Does sec-
ß 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ond language learning have adverse cognitive effects
on children? And how are two (or more) languages
represented in the brain? This chapter attempts to
Introduction answer these and other questions concerning bilingual
language learning and use.
There is a widespread perception in monolingual
societies, particularly in the United States, that bilin- Key Concepts
gualism is a rare and exceptional occurrence in com-
munication. By contrast, from a global perspective, Before discussing language development among bilin-
bilingualism is a world-wide phenomenon. In fact, guals, it is crucial to give an overview of key funda-
global communication is often carried out through mental concepts concerning language development in
a speaker’s second, third, or even fourth language. children and adults. Also, it should be mentioned that
According to David Crystal (1997) approximately the term ‘second language learning’ is used in a wider
two-thirds of the world’s children grow up in a bilin- sense to include the learning of any additional lan-
gual environment which, in turn, leads to adult guage during a period ranging from childhood to
bilingualism/multilingualism. However, childhood bi- adulthood. An additional language may be a lan-
lingualism is not the only reason for adult bilingual- guage of the country or spoken outside the country
ism. A host of different factors (such as marriage, (i.e. foreign language).
religion, education, linguistic plurality of a particular
Acquisition vs. Learning
region, migration, jobs, government policies, urbani-
zation, etc.) also lead to adult bilingualism. How, A child’s process of learning languages is different
then, do humans become bilingual? Is adult second- from an adult’s process. A child can learn any lan-
language learning different from child-language guage relatively effortlessly, while the same task
learning? Is bilingual-language acquisition different becomes rather challenging for adults. For this rea-
from monolingual-language acquisition? Is early bi- son, some second language researchers (Krashen,
Bilingualism and Second Language Learning 17

1985) distinguish between two types of mechanisms how a child does not have to even learn the specific
in language development: a subconscious process word order of his/her language, but only has to
resulting in tacit knowledge of the language (i.e., choose between already specified values – head-
‘language acquisition’), and a more conscious process initial or head-final – based on the nature of the
(i.e., ‘language learning’). While children go through input language. Children begin to learn to set para-
the former process, adults undergo the latter in their metric values even from the one-word stage.
quest to become bilingual. A Japanese child learns to choose the head-final sys-
tem, whereas an English-speaking child chooses the
The Critical Period Hypothesis and Its
Biological Basis
head-initial value. These principles are generally
refereed to as a child’s language acquisition device
In addition to degree of effort, it has been frequently (LAD).
observed that even very proficient bilinguals fall short
of being perfect bilinguals. In spite of the complete Input and Learning Environment: Natural vs.
mastery of syntax, their speech is marked by traces of Unnatural Settings
the first language accent. Similarly, it is also shown Usually children become bilinguals or multilingual in
that in spite of considerable effort and motivation, the a natural way. A normal child can become a fluent
ultimate attainment of some grammatical structures bilingual by the age of five, for instance, without any
by adults is seldom achieved. To explain these and formal training. In the process of acquiring a lan-
other differences in language acquisition and recovery guage, the role of input (motherese, etc.) or imitation
from aphasia Lenneberg (1967) proposed the ‘‘critical is important but limited. Children do not learn a
period hypothesis,’’ which is sensitive to age. This language by mindlessly imitating the input provided
hypothesis claims that there is a period in the matura- by mothers or caretakers. That is, while the role of
tion of human organism, lasting from two years to parental input cannot be ruled out, language acquisi-
puberty, in which nearly effortless and complete tion studies show that neither motherese nor imita-
language acquisition is possible. Afterwards, this tion plays a significant role in a child’s language
hypothesis notes, language learning requires more development. Instead, this burden is carried by the
effort and motivation, largely because of a loss of child himself/herself. Research on child-language ac-
brain plasticity resulting in the completion of the quisition reveals that the child learns the language by
lateralization of the language function in the left using the ‘rule formulation strategy.’ For instance, an
hemisphere. Recent research claims have additionally English-speaking child learns on his/her own that by
shown that there are different critical periods for the addition of the inflection ‘-ed’ to a verbal stem,
different grammatical structures of language. Since one generates the corresponding past tense form of
the accent (phonetics and phonology) of a second the verb. In this process, the child over-generalizes
language is the most difficult to attain, the critical and produces utterances such as ‘I go-ed’ [go-PAST].
period for phonetics and phonology (approximately Even after being corrected [i.e. provided negative
from five to seven years) is earlier than that for evidence] by the mother or caretaker that the child
morphology and syntax. See Johnson and Newport meant ‘I went’ [go.PAST], the child still does not
(1991) and Bhatia and Ritchie (1999) for details. reject the rule s/he has formulated in his or her mind
Access to Universal Grammar (UG) and which s/he still produces in utterances such as ‘I
went-ed’ [go.PAST-PAST]. The role of the adult is
Children are born to acquire human languages. Re- thus to prevent the child’s grammar from overgener-
gardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or nationality, alization. In other words, the child has an innate
every normal child is capable at birth of acquiring capacity to acquire languages in an environment
any human language. In theoretical studies following which is termed a ‘natural’ environment, whereas,
from the Chomskyan mentalistic framework, this in- by contrast, adults and school-age children learn lan-
nate ability is termed the access to universal grammar guage in formal settings such as schools and colleges
(UG). In this case, a child has full access to universal through a formal instructional method.
grammar, whereas an adult has either limited or no
access. These and other universal principles of gram-
matical structures and principles of learning largely
Defining and Measuring Bilingualism
lead a child’s language development. The role of pa- What is bilingualism and who is bilingual? Defining
rental input then becomes to trigger an appropriate and measuring bilingualism is a very complex task
value for innately given or set parameters, specific to due to the number and types of input conditions,
the language to which the child is exposed. One such biological, socio-psychological, and other non-
parameter, called the ‘head parameter,’ describes linguistic factors that can lead to a varying degree
18 Bilingualism and Second Language Learning

of bilingual competencies. In short, there is no this second setting, described by Bhatia and Ritchie
widely-accepted definition or measures of bilinguals. (1999) as ‘‘discourse allocation,’’ restricts the use of
Instead, a rich range of scales, dichotomies, and one language to one social agent or social setting and
categories are employed to characterize bilinguals. If the other language to other social situations. The
a bilingual can understand but cannot speak a second various manifestations of such strategies are the fol-
language, such an individual is called a receptive lowing: (a) one-parent/one-language (e.g., the child’s
bilingual, whereas a productive bilingual demon- mother speaks one language and, the child’s father
strates a spoken proficiency in two languages. If speaks the other. This strategy was employed by
the second language is acquired in a natural setting Leopold (1939–1949) in his classic study of bilingual
before the age of five that individual is termed language development of his daughter, Hildegard;
an early bilingual, in contrast with a late bilingual (b) one-place/one-language (e.g. speaking one lan-
who learns his second language after the age of five guage in the kitchen and the other elsewhere); (c) a
either in home or in schools. Labels such as fluent vs. language/time approach; and (d) a topic-related ap-
non-fluent, functional vs. non-functional, balanced proach. Although the discourse allocation approach
vs. unbalanced, primary vs. secondary, and partial is better than providing no input and thus raising a
vs. complete refer, either to a varying command in monolingual child, it leads to different patterns in
different types of language proficiency (e.g., spoken, bilingual language development than developing bi-
listening, writing, etc.), or an asymmetrical relation- lingualism in a natural setting. For instance, during
ship (dominance) between two languages. A com- the early stages of Hildegard’s bilingualism, she de-
pound vs. coordinate bilingual refers to the way two veloped a rule that fathers speak German and
languages are processed in the brain. The list is by no mothers speak in English.
means exhaustive. Other major distinctions such
as simultaneous vs. sequential are discussed in the
Childhood Bilingualism
next section. Similarly, bilingualism can be viewed
from individual, societal (attitudes towards bilingual- Other factors such as age and amount of exposure to
ism), and political (i.e., government policies toward the two languages also result in differences in the
bilingualism) perspectives. pattern of childhood bilingualism. The distinction
In general, a bilingual person demonstrates many between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals in
complex attributes rarely seen in a monolingual per- research on bilingual language acquisition is based
son. For that reason, a bilingual is not equivalent to on age and the degree of exposure to two languages.
two monolinguals, but something entirely different. When the child is exposed to two languages to more
This working definition of bilingualism is offered by or less the same degree from birth onward, the pat-
Bloomfield (1933), who claimed that a bilingual is tern of language development is referred to as simul-
one who has a native-like control of two languages, taneous, whereas sequential bilingualism describes
i.e., a balanced bilingual (see Grosjean 1982 or the attainment of one language first and the second
Edwards, 2004 for more details). language later, preferably before the age of seven.
Similarly, the term late bilingual is used for those
Patterns and Mechanisms in Bilinglual sequential bilinguals who acquire their second lan-
guage at a relatively younger age than adults learning
Language Development
a second language. Although there is unanimous
Providing either a natural environment or inputs in agreement among researchers about the validity of
monolingual/dominant language speech communities the simultaneous and sequential bilinguals, there is
is not a challenging task. The same is also true for no consensus among scholars about the exact line of
those societies where social and political systems are demarcation between the two. See McLaughlin
conducive to bilingualism. For instance, in India, (1984) and De Houwer (1995) for either theoretical
where bilingualism is viewed as natural, approved or methodological grounds.
by society, and further nurtured by government lan- One of the most intriguing aspects of the childhood
guage policies, linguistic groups and communities do bilingualism is how children learn to separate the two
not need to take any special measures to assure that languages, particularly in a natural setting (i.e., a
their children receive input from two languages. In simultaneous bilingual) in initial stages. After all,
sharp contrast, in societies where bilingualism is not when parents provide input, they do not tag or
valued or where the language of a minority is distinct, prime their input with a language identification
it becomes imperative for families to plan meaningful label. Even if parents go to the absurd length of
strategies to ensure the smooth exposure to the family identifying the language of each word or sentence
language. One such strategy that families employ in they use, these labels are semantically empty for
Bilingualism and Second Language Learning 19

children. Furthermore, bilingual parents unwittingly For a more detailed treatment of the shortcomings of
make the task of separating the two languages even the unitary system hypothesis and the strengths of the
harder for children because of their normal tendency dual system hypothesis, see Bhatia and Ritchie 1999:
to mix two languages. In short, a child is provided 591–614.
with three distinct types of linguistic inputs: two lan- Another fascinating feature of bilingual speech is
guages, each in an unmixed/pure form, and one with that, not only are bilinguals capable of keeping the
a mixture of two languages. Given this state of affairs, two linguistic systems separate, but they often mix
how does the child learn to separate the two lan- them either within a sentence or inter-sententially.
guages in question? This task is not challenging for This behavior is often termed ‘code-mixing’ or ‘code-
a monolingual child because only one language serves switching’ in sociolinguistic literature. Depending
as a source of input. The two hypotheses which at- upon the theoretical and empirical objectives of their
tempt to shed light on this question are the unitary research, some researchers do not distinguish
system hypothesis and the dual system hypothesis. between the two terms and use them interchangeably;
According the unitary system hypothesis (Volterra for those researchers who distinguish between the
and Taeschner, 1978), the child undergoes three two, the code-mixing refers to intra-sentential mixing
stages before s/he is able to separate two input lan- while the term code-switching refers to the intersen-
guages. During the first two stages, the child experi- tential mixing in bilinguals. Both bilingual children
ences confusion. During the first stage, s/he is unable as well as adults show this behavior. What explains
to distinguish the two lexicons and grammars of the this behavior of language mixing? Earlier research
linguistic systems. At this stage, they have a single attempted to explain it in terms of the language defi-
lexicon made up of items drawn from the lexicons ciency hypothesis: it was claimed that bilinguals in
of both languages. Hence, no translational equiva- general and children in particular have language gaps.
lents or synonyms are found in their vocabulary. As claimed by the unitary system hypothesis the lack
Volterra and Taeschner claim that their two bilingual of synonyms compels them to mix the two lexical
subjects at the ages of 1 year 10 months and 1 year systems during stage I. Similarly, stage II yields the
6 months had a hybrid list of 137 words with no mixing of two language systems due to confusion. In
translational equivalents. During the second stage, other words, the lack of proficiency in either one
the child slowly learns to separate the two lexicons, language (i.e., the absence of balanced bilingualism)
but is still unable to separate the grammatical sys- or both languages (i.e., semi-bilingualism) leads to
tems. Cross-linguistic synonyms emerge, but the child mixing.
applies the same set of syntactic rules to both lan- The language augmentation hypothesis is capable
guages. It is only during the third stage that the child of offering deeper insights into the bilingual mixing
becomes capable of separating the two sets of voca- behavior. As it has been shown earlier in the discus-
bularies and grammars. Findings of recent research sion of the dual system hypothesis, children do not go
reveal that the unitary system hypothesis cannot sus- through the initial stages of treating the two linguistic
tain the scrutiny of the succeeding research and the systems as if they were one system, but begin to
evidence motivating the three stages of bilingual lan- distinguish them immediately. The consideration of
guage development is full of shortcomings and con- optimization leads bilinguals to mix language with an
tradictions both on methodological and empirical aim to get maximum mileage from the two linguistic
grounds. systems at their disposal. An analogy drawn from the
The dual system hypothesis states that bilingual beverage industry further explains this point. The
children, based on their access to Universal Grammar separation of juices (e.g., apple vs. orange juice) ren-
and language specific parameter setting, have the ders two distinct tastes. However, if one mixes the
capacity of separating the two grammars and lexical two juices, the result is a new taste, a distinct from the
systems right from the beginning. A wide variety of two pure juices. The same is true of bilingual lan-
cross-linguistic studies (e.g., different input condi- guage mixing. Research on the linguistic and socio-
tions – one parent/one language and mixed input linguistic motivations for language mixing both in
condition; and different word order types) lends sup- children and adults shows that such considerations
port to this hypothesis. For instance, in a study as semantic domains and semantic complexity (an
devoted to the language development of a Hindi- item less complex or salient in one language), stylistic
English bilingual child, it is clear that at age 2, the effects, clarification, elaboration, relief strategy (i.e.,
child is capable of developing two distinct lexicons a linguistic item is temporarily unavailable in one
using a syllabification strategy. At the age of 1 year 7 language), interlocutor’s identification, discourse
months, two different word orders develop – SVO strategies of participants/topics, addressee’s perceived
[subject-verb-object] for English and SOV for Hindi. linguistic capability and speaker’s own linguistic
20 Bilingualism and Second Language Learning

ability, and other complex socio-psychological rea- rules – of L1 to their second language. An English-
sons, such as attitudes, societal values, and personali- speaking learner of Hindi has difficulties in hearing
ty, prompt bilinguals to mix two languages. The list and producing a four-way contrast between Hindi
of motivations is by no means exhaustive (see Bhatia aspiration and voicing contrast (i.e., unvoiced unas-
and Ritchie, 1996, for more details). pirates, unvoiced aspirates, voiced unaspirates, and
voiced aspirates).
Adult Bilingualism: Second Language Learning
It would be a gross simplification to claim that L2
In contrast to sequential childhood bilingualism, learners transfer all grammatical features of L1 to L2.
adults who learn a second language after they have Adult learners possess a relatively higher level of logi-
learned their mother tongue experience the learning cal and cognitive ability than do children; therefore,
of a second language as a laborious and conscious these qualities color their second language learning.
task. As pointed out earlier, unlike children who are For instance, English-speaking learners of Hindi will
able to universally and uniformly acquire native com- not translate there in these sentences:
petency in their mother tongue, adults rarely achieve
1. There is a chair in the room
native-like competency in their second language.
2. The chair is over there
Depending on the level of their motivation and hard
work, adults can learn a second language with vary- in an identical way (i.e. by choosing the remote loca-
ing degrees of competence. However, there comes a tive adverb in both cases). Similarly, it would be an
point during the second language learning that even oversimplification to claim that childhood bilingual-
the most talented learner cannot bypass the stage of ism is free from the dominance relationship between
‘fossilization.’ This stage is marked with second lan- the two languages. Not only does the mother tongue
guage errors which no amount of training can cor- influence second language acquisition in children, it
rect. For these reasons, second language (L2) learning also affects their school achievement.
is viewed as fundamentally different from first lan-
guage (L1) acquisition. The hypothesis which aims at Approaches to Second Language Learning
accounting for these differences between the child
In adult language acquisition research, the term sec-
and the adult language is termed the fundamental
ond language is used in a wider sense to include both
difference hypothesis.
the acquisition of a second language which may or
In spite of the asymmetrical relation between L1
may not be foreign to a country. However, in the
and L2 learning, one should not draw a conclusion
context of language teaching the distinction between
that there is nothing in common between the two.
the two is made to highlight major differences in the
What is common between L1 and L2 learners is that
learning aims, teaching methods, and the achieve-
both undergo stages of language development. In
ment levels to be attained.
other words, like L1 learners, in the process of gram-
A number of approaches have been developed to
mar construction, L2 learners undergo stages of
facilitate the learning of second/foreign languages.
development: the intermediate stages of grammar
Some of the following are notable:
development between the initial stage and the ulti-
mate stage are termed interlanguage grammars. Take 1. Grammar-translation method: Following the tra-
the case of the development of negation in English L1 dition of teaching classical languages such as
and L2 learners. The grammar of negation in L2 Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, this method places
learners of English shows the same stages of develop- emphasis on memorization and rote learning.
ment as in L1 English learners – Stage I: the sentence- Learners memorize nominal and verbal paradigms
initial placement of negation; Stage II: preverbal of the second language and translate L1 into L2 or
placement of negation with no auxiliary verb; and vice versa. Very little emphasis is placed on devel-
Stage III: preverbal placement of negation with an oping spoken proficiency in the foreign language,
appropriate auxiliary verb. while reading and written comprehension receives
overwhelming importance. This method is per-
Native Language Influence and Dominance
haps the oldest method of language teaching
An important way in which L2 learning is different which dates back to the 19th century.
from L1 learning is the influence of the mother tongue 2. The direct method: Also known as oral or natural
on second-language learning. The mother tongue or methods, it departs from the grammar-translation
L1 plays an important role in the process of L2 acqui- method in three important respects: one, memori-
sition. Research on grammatical errors of L2 shows zation receives a back seat in the learning of the
that L2 learners transfer the grammatical rules – second language; two, special emphasis is placed
phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactic on acquiring spoken and listening competencies;
Bilingualism and Second Language Learning 21

and three, the introduction of the target language diversity and pluralism by the introduction of the
is free from any reference to the native lan- Three Language Formula, which calls for trilingual-
guage of learners. Native language is never used ism in education. In addition to learning two national
as a tool to explain either grammar or other intri- languages, Hindi and English, students are expected
cacies of the target language usage. This model to learn a third language beyond their native tongue.
attempts to simulate the native speaker environ- For example, in northern India, students are expected
ment of the target language. However, in actual to learn one of the four Dravidian languages (Tamil,
practice there are severe constraints on replicating Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam) from southern
the natural setting of the native speaker’s learning India.
environment in an actual classroom setting. While bi- or multi-lingual education programs like
3. The audio-lingual method is a byproduct of World India’s do not view bilingualism in general and the
War II during which the United States experienced maintenance of minority languages in particular as a
an urgent need to quickly train its troops in foreign threat to national integration, this is not the case with
languages for overseas military operations. An em- bilingual education in the United States. U.S. educa-
phasis is placed on spoken and listening compe- tional policies are not conducive to linguistic and
tencies, rather than on written ones. cultural diversity.
4. The structural method: In order to speed up the A notable feature of the Canadian bilingual educa-
acquisition of foreign languages, insights of struc- tion program is termed the language immersion pro-
tural linguistics were applied to language teaching. gram. Introduced in the 1960s in Quebec, the
This method exposes learners to different structur- program was introduced at the request of the En-
al patterns and transformation drills. glish-speaking minority to provide their children a
high level of proficiency in schools in the dominant
Audio-lingual structural models assume that L2 is
language of the region, French. Children were im-
acquired through imitation. The discussion in the key
mersed in schools in the second language of students
concept section shows the limitation of this model.
(i.e., French) in which children used their mother
A number of other methods such as the natural ap-
tongue to communicate with a bilingual teacher
proach and ‘suggestopedia’ have been proposed, but
who would reply in French. This process leads chil-
the fact remains that no method has a grip on the
dren from what Cummins (1981) calls basic interper-
complexity involving learning a second language.
sonal communication skills (BICS) proficiency to
cognitive-academic language proficiency (CALP) in
Bilingual Education: Additive vs. the school language. BICS refer to the language profi-
ciency level of students with restricted vocabulary
Subtractive Bilingualism
and simpler syntax, whereas CALP requires a type
Teaching children a school language, particularly if of proficiency suitable for academic pursuits – a de-
the school language is different from the child’s home veloped vocabulary and sufficiently complex syntax
language, is one of the major challenges for bilingual suited for abstract and analytical thinking. The suc-
education programs. Bilingual education programs in cess of the Canadian language immersion model con-
America aim at minority students learning English. tinues to generate enthusiasm and controversy in
Such programs have attracted a great deal of contro- bilingual education in the United States.
versy on the basis of their merit and outcome. While
there is rapid growth of bilingual education programs
Socio-Psychological Factors
in the United States, the aim of such programs is not
always to introduce additive bilingualism which Successful language learning not only depends on
ensures the maintenance of the child mother tongue, teaching methods but also on learners’ motivation,
while learning the school/dominant language. A large intelligence, opportunities, and other factors, such as
number of bilingual education programs in the United their attitude toward the target language and culture.
States aim at subtractive bilingualism. In other words, Keeping in mind the motivation and the learners’
while they offer children a transition to learning the attitudes, there are two types of learners: instrumen-
school/majority language, in that process they do not tal and integrative learners. Instrumental learners,
ensure the maintenance of the child’s mother tongue. who learn a language for the purpose of gaining
In contrast, the language policies of bilingual external rewards (monitory gains, good jobs, etc.),
nations such as India, Canada, and Switzerland are however, tend to be less successful learners than
very conducive to the promotion of language rights integrative learners, who have a positive attitude
for minority languages. The government of India, toward the culture of the target language. Psycholog-
for instance, favors the advancement of linguistic ical factors such as the affective filter (Krashen, 1985)
22 Bilingualism and Second Language Learning

either inhibit or promote the learning of a second indicate why no theory of language learning and/or
language: negative influences such as anxiety, lack teaching is capable of explaining bilingual verbal
of self-confidence, and inadequate motivation can behavior and the mechanisms leading to bilingual
create serious obstacles to successful language learn- language development.
ing. Due to a lack of self-esteem and a higher level of
performance anxiety, minority children tend to raise See also: Bilingualism; Bilingual Education; Bilingual Lan-
the affective filter, which results in the reduction of guage Development: Early Years; Code Switching and
comprehensible input. Consequently, it takes a toll on Mixing; Foreign Language Teaching Policy; Interlan-
their progress in language acquisition. Similarly, since guage; Second and Foreign Language Learning and
adults show more self-consciousness than children, Teaching; Second Language Acquisition: Phonology,
Morphology, Syntax.
they put themselves in a disadvantageous position in
terms of language acquisition.
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