Comparing child second language (L2) and bilingual first language (L1) acquisition: A case study in Japanese

Utilising Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann, 1998) as a common framework, this paper reports on the aquisition of some aspects of Japanese morphology by two children who reveived exposure to Japanese in different linguistic environments. Both chldren were aquiring Japanese in an English-Japanese bilingual context, but one was aquiring Japanese as a first language (L1) and the other as a second language (L2) at the time of the study. The results of this study show that both the bilingual L1 child and L2 child took a similar route in the process of verbal morphology in Japanese.