Developmental Patterns in Flexible Word Order Acquisition

This paper presents an experimental study investigating the development of a flexible word order in early bilingual (2L) acquisition as opposed to monolingual (L1) acquisition 1 . In particular, it concerns the acquisition of direct object scrambling as a means of encoding specificity/definiteness by monolingual Ukrainian and bilingual English-Ukrainian children. Research within the last twenty years has shown that bilingual children are able to distinguish two language structures from the earliest stages and follow similar developmental patterns in each language as monolinguals (Meisel 1989; Genesee 1989; De Houwer 1994; Genesee et al 1995, Paradis & Genesee 1995 among others). These findings provide supportive evidence for the „early differentiation of languages‟ hypothesis. Nonetheless, a number of studies have noticed that the two grammars of young bilinguals are not fully independent of each other (Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 1996, Döpke 1998, Müller 1998, Müller et al 1999, Muysken 2000, Bullock & Toribio 2004). They have argued that the language(s)‟ influence/transfer/convergence occurs not only in the lexicon, but also on the syntactic level. The nature of this process has been explained in diverging terms. Supporters of the „weaker language‟ hypothesis have claimed that the acquisition of a weaker (non-dominant or less preferred) language differs fundamentally from L1 and/or balanced bilingual L1 and resembles second language (L2) acquisition (see e.g. Schlyter 1993 and Schlyter & Hakansson 1994 on French-Swedish bilinguals, or Modyanova 2006 on English-Russian bilinguals). Hulk & Müller (2000) and Müller & Hulk (2001), however, do not attribute the main role in grammar development to the dominant language, but argue for the „cross-linguistic influence‟ hypothesis claiming that the influence is to be expected only under certain specific conditions: