Simultaneous acquisition of Mandarin and English by a Malaysian child

This book looks at how one Malaysian Chinese child became a bilingual speaker of two languages - Mandarin and English. The child was observed from birth until he was two years old. This book demonstrates the type of vowels and consonants acquired and how these were combined to become sounds which would later turn into words of the adult variety. There was evidence to suggest that the child's early words were nouns and later verbs and adjectives. Language mixing also occurred from a very young age i.e. before two years old.This phenomenon was attributed to the child's developmental stage of growth. As the child grew older and as his physique and cognition developed, he was also able to use words to perform various communicative functions. By then he also showed the ability to distinguish the two language systems. At the point where the child was able to articulate two equivalent words for the same concept, the child was described as a 'true bilingual'.

Autorentext

Kuang Ching Hei is Associate Professor attached to the Faculty of Languages & Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.