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Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Background of the Research
The paper based on the theoretical framework of language variability andvariation aims to describe and explain the linguistic variation of the linguistic features,third person –s of main verbs and copula is. The author discusses how the twostructures are influenced by different linguistic environments and attempts to predictthe degree that the children have acquired according to whether they can provideobligatory suppliance of variants.This is longitudinal study with a sixteen-month time span. In this research theauthor will try to describe the systematic variation that happened in children’slanguage in expectation to shed a light upon the underlying acquisition. Bilingualismis considered in this study. It involves the simultaneous acquisition of two languagesEnglish and Cantonese. Three participants in this study were exposed almost similarlyto the two languages since their birth, and the language acquisition process took placewithin the environment of the children’s families. The studies on the acquisition ofchildren in Chinese and English bilingual families are sparse and the studies are moreinclined to focus on sociolinguistics or lingual-sociology and consider children’sdevelopment from both languages. But the paper only attaches importance to theparticipants’ English performance.
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1.2 The Significance of the Study
Practically, the present study attempts to inquire into the children’s acquisitiondevelopment. It describes the children’s linguistic variation and tries to find thelinguistic factors which give rise to the variants. Moreover, the author affirms theassumptions which was proposed by previous researchers and tries to explain somespecific variation patterns. The core of the study is in that we can predict thecapability of the children through the linguistic variation occurred in their language.Theoretically, it gets rid of the traditional knowledge about learners’ ‘mistakes’.The paper based on the theoretical framework of language variability andvariation aims to describe and explain the linguistic variation of the linguistic features,third person –s of main verbs and copula is. The author discu
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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Theoretical Framework
Variation is viewed as a feature of performance instead of the learner’sunderlying knowledge in what Tarone (1983) has called “a homogeneous model”adopted by the Chomskyan tradition. That is, the variation is a kind of phenomenathat describes the non-target-like linguistic performance of learners. Variationdelineates variants that occurred in learner’s language. It is related to the speechdisfluency that occurs in natural language use and is associated with the use oflanguage in different social situations. It also happens in different dialects of alanguage. Researchers in homogeneous competence paradigm investigate theirlinguistic competence from what they uttered. In sociolinguistics, researches aboutvariations in different English varieties are conducted. They are related to thevariation which occurs among speakers who differ in general social factors, class,ethnicity etc. It also relates to the variation which arises within the speech of a singlespeaker as a result of changes in situation contexts. Sociolinguists aim to describeboth leaner’s social competence and linguistic competence. Psycholinguist focuses