And the wolf said: "How a tasty pig!": Linguistic competence and interpreting skills in bilingual children
Vol.17,No.2(2024)
Discourse and Interaction
Elena Ciprianová
Edita Hornáčková Klapicová
The study investigates the linguistic and natural interpreting competence of two balanced Slovak-English bilingual children (siblings) while comparing the lexical and morphosyntactic production of The Three Little Pigs story through an interpreting activity in both language directions. Our research lies on the assumption that bilingual children are also natural interpreters who possess a bi-directional third competence (Harris 1976). The main objectives are to examine how children perform interpreting tasks, what types of errors they commit and what instances of cross-linguistic influence occur during these activities. From a broader perspective, the results of our research confirm that bilingual children can faithfully interpret the story in both language directions from Slovak to English and from English to Slovak. Both respondents demonstrated a high level of linguistic (lexical and morphosyntactic) and pragmatic competence in interpreting, which was done without any additions or omissions that would alter the meaning of the source message in the target language. Errors occurred mainly on the structural level, most of them were developmental errors and errors resulting from cross-linguistic influence. The presented data shed more light on the nature of bilingual language acquisition in children and their interpreting skills which constitute a natural part of this process. The findings
move the field forward through building a better understanding of the capabilities of simultaneous bilinguals, to support the hypothesis that in an encouraging environment they can become proficient communicators and successful interpreters.
bilingualism; competence; natural interpreting; language acquisition; errors
Elena Ciprianová
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra
Elena Ciprianová is Associate Professor at the Department of English and American Studies, Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in English Morphology, Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics. Her research interests lie mainly in sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, discourse analysis and intercultural communication. She has published two monographs, numerous articles in journals, and co-authored several textbooks for English language students. She is currently a member of the editorial boards of two international journals Cross-Cultural Studies: Education and Science and Topics in Linguistics.
Edita Hornáčková Klapicová
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra
Edita Hornáčková Klapicová is an associate professor at the Department of Translation Studies at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia. She has taught English, Spanish, and Slovak linguistics at universities in Slovakia, Italy, Austria, and the USA. Her primary area of research is bilingualism in children with a focus on the skill of natural interpreting, code-switching and code-mixing, language differentiation, and the acquisition of meaning in bilingual and multilingual children. Her most important works include The skill of natural interpreting in a trilingual child (2021), Modern approaches in foreign language learning: methodological and psychological issues (2020), Acquisition of meaning in bilingual children: Interference, translation and errors (2018), and Social aspects of code-switching in bilingual children (2017).
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