One vs. two systems in early bilingual syntax: Two versions of the question

Abstract

This paper identifies two versions of the question as to whether there is a single initial system in the syntax of developing bilinguals. Version 1 asks whether there are early mixed utterances, and if so, attributes this to a single initial system. Version 2 asks whether the utterances containing words from one of the child's languages exhibit the same syntax as the utterances containing words from the child's other language. We argue with reference to our own data (from an English-Spanish bilingual from ages 1;7 to 1;9) that Version 1 is not tenable because of the paucity of lexical resources when the child begins to produce two-word utterances. However, we argue that the early two-word utterances in our data do seem to exhibit a single rudimentary syntax, based on a predicate-argument structure found in all utterance types, mixed and non-mixed. We then argue in relation to Version 2 of the question, that it can only be answered once the child's utterances can be identified as language-specific in the two languages, and that this is not possible before the emergence of morphological marking. This is illustrated by an analysis of our data from ages 1;8 to 2;3. We argue that language-specific morphology allows us to identify the language of the utterances in our data and to see evidence for the appearance of two differentiated morphosyntactic systems.