Instituto Cervantes at Harvard: Conversations in the Observatorio: "Bilingual Language Acquisition" - Carmen Silva-Corvalán

Carmen Silva-Corvalán

Two major patterns of language acquisition have been identified in studies of early bilingualism: simultaneous bilingualism and sequential bilingualism, but no agreement exists with respect to the age at which bilingual development would be considered to be sequential. Carmen Silva-Corvalán focuses on bilingual first language acquisition – that is, on the acquisition of two languages from birth, Spanish and English in this case. The overall goal is to examine whether bilingualism affects the course of development in each language. The report “The Acquisition of Spanish by third generation children” will be launched as a part of Informes del Observatorio / Observatorio Reports series.

 A conversation with professors Daniel Erker (Boston University) and María Luisa Parra (Harvard University).