Do early successive bilinguals show the English L2 pattern of precocious BE acquisition?

Abstract

This study investigated the role of age-of-acquisition in determining whether young bilingual children show a pattern of L2/nonnative English, precocious BE acquisition, or whether they show the L1/native English pattern of synchronous acquisition of BE and inflectional morphology. Two groups of children with age-of-acquisition before or after 4;0 and equivalent exposure to L2 English were given production and grammaticality-judgement tasks. The children in both age-of-acquisition groups showed the precocious BE pattern, regardless of L1 background and on both tasks. We conclude that, for this aspect of morphosyntax, bilingual children who begin to learn English after age 3;0 are best characterized as child L2 rather than bilingual L1 learners.