The acquisition of English past tense forms by monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children

Abstract

This study investigates how English monolinguals and English-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals acquire the simple and compound past tense forms in English and whether they follow a similar or a different developmental path. Three corpora from CHILDES have been used in order to analyse the early stages of linguistic development of 2 English monolinguals and 2 English-Spanish simultaneous bilinguals. In the case of the bilingual children, the analysis also focuses on determining whether there is crosslinguistic influence manifested through transfer, acceleration or delay in the acquisition of English. Results show that, the age of onset of regular and irregular simple and compound past forms is the same for both the monolinguals and the simultaneous bilinguals. Regarding order of acquisition all the children maintain the same order of production, producing simple irregular past forms before any other, even if the amount of production is different for both the monolinguals and the simultaneous bilinguals. Overgeneralization only appears in the case of the English monolinguals and not in the case of the simultaneous bilinguals. These results suggest that there is no crosslinguistic influence in the case of the bilinguals and that, in some respects, acceleration appears when compared to the monolinguals’ development.