Revisiting Binding in Turkish-Dutch Bilingual Children: Comprehension and Production

The present study investigates the Dutch comprehension and production of reflexives and pronouns by young Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (4;3-6;8), as compared to young monolingual Dutch children (4;1-6;4), and it explores the Turkish comprehension of reflexives and pronouns by older Turkish-Dutch bilingual children (6;7-9;10). On the one hand, young bilingual children were examined in order to determine whether they performed differently from their older bilingual peers, who were tested in a previous study (van Koert et al., 2013). On the other hand, older Turkish-Dutch bilingual children were investigated on their Turkish comprehension, so that they could be compared to the older Turkish-Dutch bilingual children, who were tested previously in Dutch (van Koert et al., 2013). The Dutch results revealed that the young Turkish-Dutch bilingual children behaved similarly to their monolingual Dutch peers on their comprehension of reflexives and pronouns; however, they produced more omissions than their monolingual peers, which could either suggest a stage of Dutch (cf. Thrift, 2003) or reflect cross-linguistic influence (cf. Muller & Hulk, 2001). The Turkish findings showed that the Turkish-Dutch bilingual children behaved similarly on reflexives and pronouns, which has been found for monolingual Turkish children previously (Aarssen & Bos, 1999), too.