Ligger »nästan inföddlikhet» i tvåspråkighetens natur?: Om ålders- vs tvåspråkighetseffekter vid andraspråksinlärning

Abstract

The relatively recent insight, that the ultimate attainment of childhood L2 learners does not always – or, in fact, does not very often – converge fully with that of native speakers, has called into question age of acquisition (AoA) as the cause of such near-native (rather than nativelike) ultimate attainment. An alternative, increasingly popular, interpretation is that the subtle differences between near-native and nativelike language knowledge and behavior arise, not as an effect of AoA, but merely as an artefact of the customary, allegedly biased comparison between monolingual and bilingual speakers. Along similar lines, it is commonly held that it is the monolingual acquisition (made possible through total L1 loss and ‘neural resetting’) that makes it possible for internationally adopted children to become fully nativelike in their L2 (or “new L1”). With data from a recent series of studies, we challenge these views. In these studies, speakers of Swedish, who were either L1 monolinguals, L1 (simultaneous) bilinguals, early L2 (sequential) monolinguals, or early L2 (sequential) bilinguals, were tested on a total of 13 measures of language representation and processing in Swedish, covering both production and perception of phonetics, morphosyntax, and lexis. The results show consistent effects of AoA but next-to-negligible effects of bilingualism on ultimate attainment, suggesting that AoA – not bilingualism – is the primary determinant of L2 ultimate attainment.