Neologisms in Child Language: A Case Study of a Bilingual Child

Abstract

Surprising parallels with Schizophrenia and Jarganaphasia were found on a linguistic analysis of the neologistic utterances encountered in a normal 3+ year old bilingual child. The analysis in terms of phonological, semantic, grammatical, as well as a few paralinguistic features including mortality and awareness of these neologisms uttered by the normal bilingual child revealed similarities with those of schizophrenics and jarganaphasics reported in literature. This speech sample was also compared with the abnormal utterances of normal speakers. A need for both qualitative and quantitative assessment, in addition to obtaining a total picture of communication was felt in order to categorize a speaker as abnormal or pathological. It is also speculated that bilingual children may undergo such transitory phases of neologistic utterances in their language(s) acquisition process because of the very nature of bilingual / multilingual exposure.