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Towards Becoming Bilingual -- Cognitive And Semantic Considerations On Language Acquisition, Gnaneswaran Thiruraj Perinpanayagam

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

Language learning is both culture-bound and individual-skill-bound, structured on an innate, biological capacity to acquire language. While it is a remarkable phenomenon when it occurs in the acquisition of a first language, it is even more remarkable in the acquisition of a second language where the main objective concerning competence is to bring the two languages into equilibrium. This equilibrium does not result in a final co-ordinate bilingual, which is only an abstract ideal. It is, rather, the complex bilingualism - the only bilingualism it is possible to demonstrate - and the equilibrium is judged on the needs and purposes …