Transfer Phenomena in Bilingual Language Acquisition: The Case of Caused-Motion Constructions

Usage-based approaches suggest that children gradually build abstract syntactic patterns, called constructions, through processes of abstraction and schematization from the input they receive. Bilingual have challenge learning two sets non-equivalent constructions when their constructicon. This can result in deviations monolinguals, which are commonly referred to as transfer. Targeting expression caused-motion construction, present study focuses on idiosyncratic utterances, those do not correspond monolingual adult language use, three different age groups (4, 6, 8 years old) German–French bilingual comparison control groups. The quantitative analysis showed idiosyncrasies could be found both groups, but with significantly higher rates bilinguals at all ages. In a qualitative analysis, utterances were clustered into types: use verbs, directional phrases. Regarding these types, influence French shown. order classify this linguistic phenomenon usage-based approach, we propose consider transfer form overgeneralization within