Research on early bilingual development has suggested that syntactic
transfer in bilingual acquisition is dependent on patterns of dominance
and properties of the dual input the child is exposed to. In a case study
of a Hong Kong bilingual child we present evidence of transfer from Cantonese
to English in three areas where the two languages contrast typologically:
wh-in-situ interrogatives, null objects and prenominal relatives are observed
at a period when Cantonese is dominant as measure by MLUw. Comparisons
with monolingual development show both qualitative and quantitative differences
attributable to transfer. Language dominance is seen as the major determinant
of transfer, with input ambiguity playing a role in the domain of null
objects. While the two distinct and seperate linguistic systems are simultaneously
developing in the bilingual mind, the pervasiveness of transfer implies
a high degree of interaction between them. The findings show that the bilingual
subject in our case study has taken a different path from monolinguals
toward the target.