You all probably know that twinsare twooffspringproduced by the samepregnancy. Twins can either bemonozygotic("identical"), meaning that they can develop from just onezygotethat will then split and form twoembryos, ordizygotic("fraternal"), meaning that they can develop from two different eggs, each are fertilized by separate sperm cells. In contrast, afetuswhich develops alone in the womb is called asingleton, and the general term for one offspring of amultiple birthis 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 singletonsdo. 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.