INVESTIGATING THE BILINGUAL ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE ACQUIRED BY AN EARLY AGED CHILD FROM SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: A CASE STUDY

RESUMO

Herman Herman, Ridwin Purba*, Natalina Purba, Endang Fatmawati, Nanda Saputra, Nguyen Van Thao

This research deals with acquisition of language acquired by Kent Fukada, a one and half year Indonesian baby boy, at his current age of 1-2 years old in Pematangsiantar. This baby boy is a bilingual child because since his birth, he got three languages; Hokkian, Indonesia, and English. Bilingual covers to both bilingual and multilingual acquisition. Fierro-Cobas and Chan (2001:80) defined language development is a multifaceted and ever-changing process that is shaped by factors such as a child's age, the degree of language exposure, and social interactions. It is common for bilingual children to engage in both simultaneous and sequential bilingualism. The purpose of this research is to know the words combination and language development produced by a bilingualism child in his current age. The researchers used some theories to answer the problem such as Chomsky (2009), Romaine (1995) as cited in Zhu and Li (2005), Fierro-Cobas and Chan (2001). The research methodology utilized a case study approach, and the data collection involved following the subject through naturalistic observation to record their communications with individuals around them (Clark and Clark, 1977). According to Fierro-Cobas and Chan (2001), a child at the age of 1-2 years can simultaneously use two languages. However, this study's results demonstrate that Kent Fukada, as a bilingual child, can produce a considerable number of words and combine more than two languages, including Hokkian (as the mother tongue), English, and Indonesian.