Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA): Evidence for Bangla-English Learning Bilingual Child’s Phonological Development

Abstract

This article falls within the domain of “bilingual first language acquisition”. It discusses the early phonological development of a Bangla-English learning bilingual child at 12 months of age focusing on the occurrences of universal and language specific sound patterns found in the pre-linguistic and first word stage of infant vocalization. The co-occurrences of universal trends were indeed visible in the infants’ babbling in both language contexts, which is consistent with previous studies. However, since language specific patterns for Bangla and English were not substantial at this early stage, “language differentiation” had not taken place. Traces of mixed sound segments from the two languages provide evidence that it is possible for infants to develop sounds segments from two separate phonological systems simultaneously, that is, a child is able to acquire two first languages simultaneously, though the production level may not be homogeneous. This could be related to input factors. Though this research is an extraction from an ongoing longitudinal study, the findings are noteworthy as they provide data for developmental process at a given phase of language acquisition.