You all probably know that twins are two offspring produced by the

same pregnancy. Twins can either be monozygotic ("identical"),

meaning that they can develop from just one zygote that will then split
and form two embryos, or dizygotic ("fraternal"), meaning that they
can develop from two different eggs, each are fertilized by separate
sperm cells.
In contrast, a fetus which develops alone in the womb is called
a singleton, and the general term for one offspring of a multiple
birth is multiple. It is more interesting to make a reasearch about
monozygotic twins, beacuse they are genetically nearly identical and
they are always the same sex unless there has been a mutation during
development. While dizygotic twins are just as similar as any sibilings
are.
The twin situation in linguistics stands for all special situations in
which twins grow up and learn language and the difference between
multiples and singeltons. Monozygotic twins are special group,
although genetically very similar, are not genetically exactly the same.
General characteristics of twin language are later linguistics
development, directed speech and cryptophasia. Their development
can be late even for 25 months, but at the age of 9 the difference
disappears. The example of directed speech would be: ''Mommy, I'm
hungry.'' Cryptophasia (Does anyone have idea what could it be?) It
isn't completely new laguage, it is usally based on mother laguage,
with some differences and made up words. VIDEO Today I'm going to
talk about expressing identity of twins in speech on the example of
two sisters (Ema and Nina). They are monozygotic twins, Croatian
native speakers and they don't have any disorders that could influence
their speech. I'm going to talk about their speech between the age of 1
year and 8 months and 6 years and 6 moths.

This period can be divided in 4 stages.

At the first stage(1:8 1:9) they had one identity. In some situations
they talk about theirselves as Emanina. For example, what's your
name? Who did that mess? Whose ball is this? Girls don't call each
other directly, but they use directed speech with others (parents,
grandparents etc.) It doesn't mean that they think they're one person,
because when mother calls Ema, only Ema respons. They can be two
persons but they think about themselves as one of pair. The adults can
infuelnce on that too, because they always talk about them as girls or
twins or babies. They always talk about them as pair.
At the second or nominal stage (1:9 1:10), ) the subjects start
separating their own identities from the pair (Ema-and-Nina). Rarely
they use name Emanina. Nina uses for the first time the word keka for
Croatian word seka (sis in Englesh).
At third or pronominal stage (1:10 ! 2:11), in which the emergence
of personal pronouns linguistically reflects individual identity (Ja I,
me), when Nina abruptly stopped referring to herself using her own
name, while Ema used a naming system in parallel with the pronoun
system for some months. Sometimes they speak so called English, it
isn't really English laguage, but some made up words that sound like
English.
At the final stage (3:0 6:6) individidual, as well as
speakers identity is expressed according to the
standard norms. They don't use name Emanina, they
call each other seka (sis). Regarding their identity, clues
as to the prevalence of their twin-pair identity are
noticed even in the fourth stage, well after the time
when pair-identity was expressed by a common name.

The twins are identical and yet show subtle or overt

language differences:Ninas language development
shows an earlier start in several features, she leaves
phases more abruptly, while Ema tends to follow her at
a somewhat slower rate that shows that social impacts
are more important than biological. The paper shows
that twins express their identity differently than
singletons
do. The development of identity and its verbal
expressons do not follow thesame pathway all the time,
nor do understanding and production. This is another
argument in favour of the claim that the language of
twins should be analysed as a unique entity which could
only partially be compared withthe language of
singletons.