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Observations On The Language Acquisition Of A Thai/English Bilingual Child, Michael A. Betcher

MA TESOL Collection

A child subject, bilingual in Thai and English, was studied during his 25th months for aspects of transference* and interference in his developing speech. A speach diary was kept on a daily basis. Attention was focused on prosodic features (intonation/tonality), word borrowing and code switching. Examples of all these phenomena were recorded, but the most significant was that of prosodic interference, wherein English intonation indicating stress, excitement or urgency was carried over into the strictly regulated Thai intonation system. * A term which is used to avoid the negative implications of "interference" and to indicate the use of a syncretic …