A STUDY OF EARLY TAMIL/ENGLISH BILINGUALISM

Abstract

This study examines thhe acquisition of functional categories - INFL in early Tamil/English bilingual children. Grammatical phenomena related to the INFL, such as Word Order, Case System and Tense and Agreement were systematically examined. It was found that language specific word order forms were attested in all three subjects examined. Both Case and Agreement system were also found to be present in all the subjects examined. The morphologically rich language like Tamil seemed to trigger early acquisition of some grammatical phenomena. However, it was discovered that tense was acquired only by the older children, indicating the role of the maturational factor in language development.