Simultaanse kakskeelsusega 3- ja 4-aastaste laste grammatilised oskused eesti keeles

Abstract

Artikkel otsib vastust küsimusele, kas ja mille poolest sarnaneb simultaanselt eesti ja vene keelt omandavate 3- ja 4-aastaste laste (N = 82) lauseloome ja sõnavormide kasutusoskus eesti keeles sama vanade eesti ükskeelsete eakohase arenguga (N = 499) ja kõnehilistusega laste (N = 86) oskustega. Grammatiliste oskuste hindamiseks kasutati 3–4-aastaste laste kõne testi. Tulemustest selgus, et kakskeelsete laste oskused jäävad ükskeelsete eakohase arenguga laste oskustest maha, sarnanedes kõnehilistusega laste sooritustele. Suuremaid erinevusi rühmade vahel täheldati sõnavormide kasutuses. Selgus, et kakskeelsete laste sooritusi, eriti käändevormide kasutust, mõjutab, kas ema või isa räägivad lapsega eesti keeles.  

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Grammar skills of three- to four-year-old simultaneously bilingual children in Estonian

Morphosyntactic skills are a valuable marker of child language development. The acquisition of Estonian by bilingual children has been studied by few longitudinal case studies. The study reports syntax and morphology skills in three- to fouryear- old typically developing Estonian-Russian bilingual children compared to monolingual Estonian typically developing children and late talkers. Grammatical skills were measured by tasks from Speech and Language Assessment Test for three- to four-year-old Estonian children. The findings show that grammar skills of bilingual and monolingual children are different. The results of bilingual children were significantly lower than those of typically developing monolingual children, but better than those of monolingual late talkers, although nonsignificantly. Bigger gruop differences appeared in morphology use compared to sentence production and imitation. Skills in using verbal inflection were better and more homogeneous than those of using nominal inflection. Bilingual children whose mothers provide input mainly in Estonian outperformed those whose input by mothers is mainly in Russian. In general, morphological skills of three- to four-year-old children with simultaneous bilingualism are still developing and follow similar pattterns to that of typical monolingual development in grammar acquisition. Results update current knowledge about the grammar acquisition by bilingual and monolingual children in Estonian.