The consequences of Bilingualism on Language Development

By. Semi Kim

Who is bilingual?A bilingual is a person who can speak, understand, use, read, write, think, or even sing in two languages fluently

Morphological Development Morphology is the branch of

grammar devoted to the study

of the structure or forms of

words, primarily through the

use of the morpheme construct.

It is traditionally distinguished

from syntax (rules governing

the combinations of words to

form sentences)

Morpheme: A smallest unit of meaning in a language One morpheme: Any word that

cannot be divided into smaller parts with meaning Example: dog, big, run

Free morpheme: some mor-phemes that can stand alone Example: sunglasses= sun +

glass + es

Bound morpheme: some mor-phemes that cannot stand alone Example: -er, -ist, dis- etc.

How does Bilingualism influ-ence morphological devel-opment?

Observations (one-on-one interaction) for 1 semester

Wug test

Introducing my fo-cus student Rachel (made up name)

Background

Information

About Rachel

• 8 year old girl

• Came from Cameroon in 2013

• Has a big family (3 older sisters and 1

younger brother)

• Very active in classroom

Methodolgy #1

Observations

Observations “gave”“gived”

“took” “taked”

“Cat eats” “cat eat”

“quickly” “quick”

Methodolgy

#2Wug Test

Wug test

Past tense Singular and Plural possessive

"This is a niz who owns a hat. Whose hat is it? It is the ______ hat. Now there are two nizzes. They both own hats. Whose hats are they? They are the ______ hats.“

"This is a bik /bIk/ who owns a hat. Whose hat is it? It is the xxx hat. Now there are two bik-s.They both own hats. Whose hats are they? They are the xxx hats."

"This is a man who knows how to spow /spow/. He is spowing. He did the same thing yester-day. What did he do yesterday? Yesterday he xxx. "

"This is a man who knows how to rick /rIk/. He is ricking. He did the same thing yesterday. What did he do yesterday? Yes-terday he xxx."

Wug testDiminutive and compounded or derived word Plural

"This is a wug /wΛg/. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two xxx.“

"This is a gutch /gΛč/. Now there is another one.There are two of them.There are two xxx.”

"This is a kazh /kæž/. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two xxx ".

"This is a wug. This is a very tiny wug. What would you call a very tiny wug? This wug lives in a house. What would you call a house that a wug lives in?“

This is a dog with quirks /kw~ks/ on him. He is all cov-ered with quirks. What kind of dog is he? He is a xxx dog."

Results Lack of vocabularies Out of 20 wug test questions, Rachel got 7 correctly, and those were mostly plural and past tense questions

Compared to 2 other on level students(first language as English) in the classroom, Rachel scored 2-3 points lower

Discussions

Limitations Was not able to get more data from more stu-

dents

Possible sources of errors Rachel might not have been in the best condi-

tion for a test

Questions How long would Rachel take in order to fully

develop morphological knowledge?

References

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. London: George Allen & Unwin.

Wug test. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 07, 2014, from http://en.wikipedi-a.org/wiki/wugtest