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Abstract
Introduction Literature review. Noam Chomskys Universal Grammar theory (19) revolutionised how linguists study and interpret the acquisition of languages. It is the root of many of todays theories, which aim to prove and disprove UG. The UG claims that there are principles common to all languages and that all human beings are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which with experience and external input, forms a Specific Grammar and parameters enabling a child to communicate in the language of her environment. This
MA in the Acquisition of English and Intercultural Communication 40934 Theory and Methods in Language Acquisition The Acquisition of Syntax innate ability to learn a language is a biological function, such as learning to crawl and walk and is subject to various stages which are recognised in language acquisition. The stages present difference in errors which can be used to analyse and interpret the way in which languages are acquired. The stages of learning are important when analysing the data and classifying the errors as functional or lexical category mixing.
Method Using the data collected by Perez, 2010 in CLAN, utterances from bilingual children in Spanish and American English living in America were analysed for mixing at word and sentence level. In particular the data from Albert, Carla and _____ at (;____;___) was taken into consideration for this study. The data was then compared with _____(?Sylvia At (___;____;____) a Catalan and Spanish Bilingual child living in Barcelona. The data analysed has been collected in a naturalistic environment, with no direct elicitation of specific tokens. The children are all of bilingual parents
MA in the Acquisition of English and Intercultural Communication 40934 Theory and Methods in Language Acquisition The Acquisition of Syntax
Juana M. Liceras, Raquel Fernandez Fuertes, Susana Perales, Rocio Perez-Tattam, Kenton Todd Spradlin, Gender and gender agreement in bilingual native and non-native grammars: A view from child and adult functional-lexical mixings, Lingua, Volume 118, Issue 6, Formal syntactic approaches to bilingual code-switching, June 2008, Pages 827851, ISSN 0024-3841, DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2007.05.006.
MA in the Acquisition of English and Intercultural Communication 40934 Theory and Methods in Language Acquisition The Acquisition of Syntax