Child Second Language Development in Immersion Education

This book focuses on child second language development. The cross-sectional study investigates the syntax-semantics interface in second language German and French. The findings suggest that all child second language learners go through a Romance stage when acquiring generic reference before progressing to a Germanic stage in second language German.

Language acquisition has been the subject of decades of research. Most of the previous research on second language acquisition has centered around adult learners, leaving child learners understudied by comparison. This book focuses on child second language development. The cross-sectional empirical study herein investigates the syntax-semantics interface in English speaking children acquiring German and French as second languages. The author discusses variables such as crosslinguistic influence, the complexity of the learning tasks, cognitive maturity and the learning context. By focusing on child second language acquisition in immersion education, this book not only substantially contributes to the field of second language acquisition but also offers important insights into teaching in an immersion context.

Autorentext

Nadine Kolb holds a PhD degree in English linguistics from the University of Cologne, Germany. She is an Associate Professor in English language in the Department of Cultural Studies and Languages at the University of Stavanger, Norway, and currently a Marie Sk odowska-Curie Fellow in the AcqVA Aurora Center at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Her research focuses on child second and third language acquisition, heritage language bilingualism and multilingual education.

Inhalt

multilingualism - child second language acquisition - second language development - immersion education - transfer - crosslinguistic influence - syntax-semantics interface - morpho-syntax - L2 German - L2 French - L1 English - generic reference - individual variation - determiner phrase - cross-sectional