This is a longitudinal case study of a child who began learning English in an ESL environment while still developing her native language, Korean. It examines the participant’s Korean and English negation, plural and possessive markings with a view t...
This is a longitudinal case study of a child who began learning English in an ESL environment while still developing her native language, Korean. It examines the participant’s Korean and English negation, plural and possessive markings with a view to tracking evidences of cross-linguistic influences using comparisons to L2-English data from speakers with similar and dissimilar L1s. Data are interpreted using Foster-Cohen’s (2001) Sliding Window approach, which underscores that individual development along a variety of axes including age, cognitive maturity, and native-like performance in L1 should be considered, rather than simply distinguishing L1 from L2 acquisition or early from late acquisition. The results showed cross-linguistic effects for all features studied, with a predominance of Korean to English transfer early in the study period, and English to Korean towards the end. The findings also showed that the participant’s waxing and waning L2 performance during the course of the study reflected changes in her L1 and in the intensity of exposure to both languages.