Bilingual Child Language Acquisition

Antonia Soriente is studying the acquisition of bilingualism by her two children, Guglielmo and Beatrice. While their mother is a native speaker of Italian, their father is Indonesian. Although they live in a largely Indonesian-speaking environment, they are exclusively addressed by their mother in Italian. At this stage, Guglielmo, the eldest, is totally fluent in Indonesian,and appears to comprehend Italian, though his production of the latter is still very limited.

The children are video recorded on a regular weekly basis. Sessions alternate between predominantly Indonesian with the father, predominantly Italian with the mother, and mixed. For each child, the recordings began at the age of 8 months.

In addition, a diary study is being conducted, focussing on utterance exhibiting a mixture of Indonesian and Italian forms.

Topics analysed include the acquisition of negation and the study of mixed forms produced by the bilingual child.

Indonesian / Javanese

Dini Andarini is studying the acquisition of bilingualism by her child, Ramzi. Although both parents are natives of East Java, his mother speakers to him in Indonesian while his father speaks to him in Javanese.

The children are video recorded on a regular weekly basis.