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Chapter 5. Simultaneous child bilingualism

  • Elena Nicoladis
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Bilingual Cognition and Language
This chapter is in the book Bilingual Cognition and Language

Abstract

Simultaneous bilingual children are exposed to two languages from an early age. They show a remarkable ability to differentiate their two languages from early in development. They nonetheless show some small signs of cross-linguistic influence, or processing their two languages in ways that show influence from the other language. Bilingual children’s language development can lag behind that of monolingual children’s, at least when including only the results of one of their languages. Some (but not all) studies have shown bilingual advantages in some aspects of cognitive development. It is not yet clear why there are differing results across studies.

Abstract

Simultaneous bilingual children are exposed to two languages from an early age. They show a remarkable ability to differentiate their two languages from early in development. They nonetheless show some small signs of cross-linguistic influence, or processing their two languages in ways that show influence from the other language. Bilingual children’s language development can lag behind that of monolingual children’s, at least when including only the results of one of their languages. Some (but not all) studies have shown bilingual advantages in some aspects of cognitive development. It is not yet clear why there are differing results across studies.

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