The acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2) by bilingual preschool children (Russian-L1): A longitudinal multiple-case study

In this longitudinal study, we examined bilingual children’s acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew distinguishes between definite and indefinite nouns by marking definiteness by article. We recorded the speech of nine bilingual Russian–Hebrew-speaking children ranging in age from three to four years old in monthly sessions over a period of seven months. Their age of onset of acquisition of Hebrew (L2) ranged from six to 42 months. The L1 of all participants was Russian, which has no definite and indefinite articles. We compared the bilingual children’s acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew to that of monolingual Hebrew-speaking children to outline the qualitative and/or quantitative differences in the patterns found. This comparison also enabled us to determine whether the bilinguals transfer their knowledge from L1 to L2 (transfer hypothesis) or show fluctuation in their article choice (fluctuation hypothesis). Four tendencies were found with regard to the bilingual children: 1. All bilingual children made omission errors in definite contexts (evidence of transfer); 2. We observed misuse of articles, overuse and syntactic errors in all the children’s utterances (evidence of fluctuation); 3. We found both similarities and differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in acquisition of definiteness; and 4. Children with early age of L2 onset (before age three) demonstrated more accelerated acquisition of definiteness than children with later onset of L2 (after age three).