Framvekst av morfologi, syntaks og ordforråd i tidleg andrespråksutvikling - ein longitudinell kasusstudie

The investigation studies the Norwegian-language development in vocabulary, morphology and syntax in two multilingual children who started learning Norwegian in kindergarten. One of the purposes is to obtain empirically based knowledge about how grammar in the second language, in this case Norwegian, develops in this group of language learners. Another aim is to investigate methods that are suitable for highlighting the development of vocabulary and grammar in such young children. The research question was: How does language learning occur in children who learn multiple languages with different starting points?

The results indicate that even if children start learning a second language long before the age of three, the development of the second language will be different from the development of the first language. The two children who were observed developed their Norwegian language in all the areas studied during the period they were observed (although the children had individual variation in learning pace and learning scope). The results suggest that delaying the start of language learning has an effect, and that children who meet Norwegian for the first time when they start kindergarten are second language learners of Norwegian. The authors emphasise that even if the children meet Norwegian at an early point, they require follow-up and adaptation to learn the second language in the best possible way. They believe that mixing the qualitative and quantitative analyses of data provided good insight into how multilingual children develop the majority language.

A longitudinal case study has been used to study the Norwegian-language development of two multilingual kindergarten children. The researchers have analysed syntactic, morphological and lexical traits in children’s language at three different measurement points over a period of 2 1/2 years, from when the children were around 3 to 5 years old. The data was collected as part of the larger project, Children’s Language. Language and dialect contact in the modern kindergarten. The study is both descriptive and experimental, where the authors have used a sample of language analyses, both quantitative and qualitative, in order to identify good measurements of development.

Gujord, A. K. H., Neteland, R., Selås, M. (2018). "Framvekst av morfologi, syntaks og ordforråd i tidleg andrespråksutvikling - ein longitudinell kasusstudie". NOA: norsk som andrespråk, 34(1/2):93-127.