BILINGUALISM IN CHILD'S LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT (CHINESE-TURKISH EXAMPLE)

Demircan (1990: 20), states that bilingualism is a person's use of a second language other than his/her mother tongue to a certain extend in a period of his/her lifetime. Hamer and Blanc (2000: 6) in Webster Dictionary explains that; a person who speaks two languages is defined as a speaker who has two languages or who can speak both fluently in particular and emphasises that bilingual person speaks two languages especially as a habit and under his/her control. Temel, Bekir and Yaz？c？ (2014: 193) say that bilingualism is an ability to establish a skill to communicate in two languages. The purpose of this study is to give information about the language development in Children and to examine children who can speak two languages and how they can develop this ability. Meryem Aysel -the subject of our study- is bilingual. She was 26 month old when the observation was made. Her mother is Chinese and her father is Turkish. Her name is Aya in Chinese which means olite, graceful in Turkish. Her mother's name is Xiao in Chinese and ？i？dem in Turkish. Her father's name is Alparslan. Both mother and father speak 3 languages, Turkish, Chinese and English. At home, usually Turkish and Chinese are spoken, English is only spoken when necessary. Meryem Aysel can speak Turkish and Chinese and learns both languages fluently. Her bilingualism is synchoronous. During 3 months observation, Chinese and Turkish Language development of Meryem Aysel is analysed. Based on these observations, her bilingual development is evaluated according to Phonetics, Morphology, Lexicology, Semantics and Syntax. As a result of thesee valuations, Language development of Meryem Aysel is very fast and beyond her age and also she selects the languages very smartly. She is aware of and knows when and where to use Chinese or Turkish. She perfectly understands Chinese and when alone with her mother at home always speaks Chinese. She prefers speaking Turkish when she is with her grandmother or father. Depending on the exposure of hearing both languages, sometimes Chinese , sometimes Turkish becomes the dominant language