Context

Memo

To: ENGW 3307 Fall 2019

From: Giuliana OConnell

CC: Cecelia Musselman

Date: 10/20/19

Re: Project 2 Draft 1

Comments: L1 and L2 refer to Language 1- the primary use or first acquired Language of a given person. L2 refers
to their second acquired or non-dominant language. Bilinguals are generally thought to have one
dominant language or language of preference, though this may not be true for all bilinguals, but for
the purposes of this paper, all discussions of L1 and L2 will be assumed to reference the preferred or
first acquired language, and the secondary language.

Transfer: a hypothesis accounting for the appearance of features specific to one language in the
production of the other language by the child. This would indicate interaction between languages.

Acceleration: hypothesis predicting that bilingual children will exhibit faster rates of acquisition of
linguistic features than their monolingual peers by using acquisition of one language to aid in the
acquisition of the other.

Deceleration: a hypothesis predicting that bilingual children will exhibit slower rates of language
acquisition across Linguistic features than their monolingual peers due to constraints or structure of 1
language interfering with acquisition of the feature in the other language.

Monolingual is a person who has acquired one language and only one language.

Types of Bilingualism: Simultaneous vs Sequential

To be a simultaneous bilingual, one needs to acquire a second language before age 3 and at a similar
level of exposure to that which they have in L1. Acquisition after age 3 is categorized as sequential
bilingualism. In all instances of bilingualism, no level of fluency is guaranteed or required. People may
acquire a second language any time in life and through any method of language learning. Similarly,
people may lose proficiency in L1 or L2 and their dominant language may change over the lifetime.
What is Phonology: Phonology is the branch of linguistics dealing with contrastive sounds. Contrastive
sounds are those which are able to carry or change meaning within a word (cat vs chat as having
different meanings despite similar sounds). Phonology makes heavy use of the International Phonetic
Alphabet (IPA) to orthographically (in written text) convey sounds. In the IPA, each individual sound
has one corresponding symbol. There are also diacritics which may be used to convey sounds which
are carrying aspects of other sounds (ie: nasalized vowels).
Bootstrapping: similar to acceleration, bootstrapping is a tactic of language learners to use parts of
language that they do know (whether it be syntax or semantics) to assist them in acquiring the parts
they do not yet know.
 Developmental Language Delay (DLD): Formerly known as Specific Language Impairment (SLI), DLD is a
delay (being behind expected milestones for their age) in any areas of an otherwise typically
developing child’s language acquisition.