Crosslinguistic influence and bilingual children’s weaker language

Abstract

Various kinds of asymmetry in bilingual development have been investigated, with a distinction often being made between the ‘dominant’ and the ‘weaker’ language. One interesting question is to what extent the acquisition of the two languages resembles monolingual acquisition patterns of the languages involved. Some findings point to the independent development of two language systems, indicating that the weaker language, despite developing in a delayed manner, actually follows the same developmental pattern as when it is acquired as the only language. However, other results suggest that the weaker language differs fundamentally from monolingual L1 (or balanced bilingual L1) and resembles an L2, or provide evidence for the separation of both languages and cross-linguistic influences. This Chapter analyses the weaker language output of two unbalanced simultaneous Polish-English bilingual children with the aim of gauging the extent and nature of crosslinguistic influence. While the influence of the weaker language (English) on the stronger one (Polish) was found to be very limited, numerous nontarget elements were observed in the weaker language, about half of which can clearly be attributed to crosslinguistic influence.