Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Language modules and bilingual processing
- 2 Phonological processing in two languages
- 3 Second-language learning in children: a model of language learning in social context
- 4 Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children
- 5 Giving formal definitions: a linguistic or metalinguistic skill?
- 6 Metalinguistic dimensions of bilingual language proficiency
- 7 Translation skill and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals
- 8 Towards an explanatory model of the interaction between bilingualism and cognitive development
- 9 Constructive processes in bilingualism and their cognitive growth effects
- 10 Language, cognition, and education of bilingual children
- Index
6 - Metalinguistic dimensions of bilingual language proficiency
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Language modules and bilingual processing
- 2 Phonological processing in two languages
- 3 Second-language learning in children: a model of language learning in social context
- 4 Interdependence of first- and second-language proficiency in bilingual children
- 5 Giving formal definitions: a linguistic or metalinguistic skill?
- 6 Metalinguistic dimensions of bilingual language proficiency
- 7 Translation skill and metalinguistic awareness in bilinguals
- 8 Towards an explanatory model of the interaction between bilingualism and cognitive development
- 9 Constructive processes in bilingualism and their cognitive growth effects
- 10 Language, cognition, and education of bilingual children
- Index
Summary
The [bilingual] child learns to see his language as one particular system among many, to view its phenomena under more general categories, and this leads to awareness of his linguistic operations.
(Vygotsky, 1962, p. 110)Why would we expect bilingual children to display different metalinguistic abilities from monolingual children? If language proficiency, and, in particular, oral-language proficiency, is construed as a universal achievement of all members of the species, governed by innate mechanisms that assure its propitious evolution from the first words heard and spoken, then there is little basis for expecting significant variation in speakers' knowledge of language as a function of simply how many linguistic systems they have mastered. But language proficiency is not simply a skill or procedure which is mastered independently of other forms of knowledge and other types of abilities. Language is also a logical symbolic system, capable of being known itself and capable of guiding and shaping other aspects of cognition. Entry into these uses of language that involve its own properties and structure is more or less what researchers mean by metalinguistic awareness. It is because metalinguistic aspects of language are not necessarily specific to particular languages that their discovery may be influenced by the mastery of two languages, and it is because metalinguistic awareness is consequential for other aspects of cognition, both linguistic and non-linguistic, that its study is important.
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- Language Processing in Bilingual Children , pp. 113 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991
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