Developmental Study of English Acquired by Japanese-English Bilingual Children Raised in an Artificial Bilingual Environment

Developmental analyses were conducted on utterances produced by two Japanese-English bilingual children raised in an artificial bilingual environment. First, the analyses of the development of English verb usage revealed the following findings. The children started to use verbs by reproducing parental input. They proceeded to replace a word in unanalyzed chunks. They began to be creative by replacing the subject, object or complement in the slot of pivot schemas. They made very few word-order mistakes presumably because they were not highly creative in their utterances by age 4;0. Second, analyses were conducted on the children's ability to distinguish Japanese and English in their utterances. They started to make distinction after age 2;0 and became productive by age 2;6. Synonymous utterances were used for a few months before they start distinguishing the two languages. Self-correction behavior started after they displayed the ability. Misuse and mixing decreased around age 3;0. After age 3;0,they started to use synonymous sentences in large quantity. This is because they engaged in item-learning and stored unanalyzed chunks. When unable to produce the English equivalent of Japanese utterances, they resorted to such strategies as, using semantically similar alternative expressions or avoidance; or they failed in sentence construction, or produced English sentences revealing the influence of Japanese. This will be due to the shortage of English inventory stored by item-learning. The findings above agree with contentions made in the usage-based model.