Between 2L1-and child L2 acquisition - An experimental study of bilingual Dutch

In this article we examine the acquisition of (i) the position of the finite verb in subordinate clauses and (ii) the grammatical gender of the definite determiner in Dutch by bilingual children from ethnic minority communities. The experimental results reveal that these children show a delay; they (ultimately) reach the target grammar for word order, whereas this is not so clear with respect to grammatical gender. These differences are explained by showing that these bilingual children are more like L2 than 2L1 acquirers, particularly with respect to the quantity and the quality of the Dutch input they are exposed to.