Jamais deux sans trois ? Comment l’enfant s’approprie trois langues parallèlement (étude de cas)

Abstract

This paper submits some results of the research project started in 2010 by the Research Institute of European Languages and Literatures (EA 4363) of the University of Haute Alsace (France) and the Chair of Didactics and Language Acquisition (IFR KUL) of the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland). The project consists of systematic description of the appropriation process of three linguistic systems (which coexist in the same border socio-linguistic environment) by a four-and-a-half-year-old child. First, we give some reflexions regarding the commonly held view that children, unlike adults, learn a foreign language more quickly and easily by acquiring in a record time an infinite amount of information on linguistic codes of very different configurations. Secondly, we submit the first results of the discursive development analyses in a child born into a bilingual family (Polish mother and French father) exposed to two languages from birth, and growing up in a context where German is one of the early education languages (bilingual kindergarten). Our questions focus specifically on code switching, metalinguistic awareness and theuse of reported speech.

Keywords

• child acquisition
• L1 acquisition
• L2 acquisition
• L3 acquisition
• trilingual child
• code-switching
• metalinguistic awareness
• reported speech