The bilingual development of plural marking in a Malay-English child

Rabiah Tul Adawiyah Mohamed Salleh, Bruno Di Biase, Satomi Kawaguchi

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

This study investigates the development of plural encoding in a Malay- English bilingual first language acquirer from a Processability Theory (PT) perspective. In Malay, plurality is encoded through reduplication, while English uses morphological inflection. The child’s oral production was collected weekly from age 3;4 to 3;10 using natural conversation and elicitation tasks in separate Malay and English sessions. Expressions for singular and plural contexts are analysed based on PT. Results suggest that pluralisation in each language followed PT, they add to the applicability of PT to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), and reveal some novel typological sequences. Cross-linguistic influences were found in plural encodings in each language. Also, a prosodic feature was, usefully, found to disambiguate between Malay ‘iteration’ (Lemma) and ‘reduplication’ (Category procedure).
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProcessability and Language Acquisition in the Asia-Pacific Region
EditorsSatomi Kawaguchi, Bruno Di Biase, Yumiko Yamaguchi
Place of PublicationNetherlands
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing
Pages166-191
Number of pages27
ISBN (Electronic)9789027254917
ISBN (Print)9789027212870
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

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