Despite the worldwide prevalence of multilingualism, the knowledge of the relationship between domain-general cognitive control and multilingual language control remains scant. Here we provide new insights into this issue by examining systematically how different components of inhibitory control (i.e., response inhibition and interference…

Switching language is costly for bilingual speakers and listeners, suggesting that language control is effortful in both modalities. But are the mechanisms underlying language control similar across modalities? In this study, we attempted to answer this question by testing whether bilingual speakers incur a cost when switching to a different…

Describes the language development of two children, now aged 5 and 8, who acquired two languages--Spanish and German--simultaneously from birth and a third--English--when very young. Focuses on the following factors: patterns of interference, code switching, language dominance, the role of parents, the social environment, and the child's…

Insight into processes involved in child bilingualism is provided by this account of the "primary language acquisition" (in the sense of Lamendella, 1977) of two languages, English and Hebrew, by a 4 1/2 year old subject. The child's re-entry into her first language, Hebrew, after a year spent in an all-English environment, is traced. Of central…

In this study, Spanish language samples were collected for a young bilingual Puerto Rican Spanish-English speaking child during a 2-year period (ages 4-6). Results suggest a progressive reduction of morphological and syntactical complexity in Spanish. The observed errors tended to affect mainly Spanish inflectional morphology. Implications for…

The correlation between a bilingual's usage of grammatical morphemes from one of his/her languages and his/her language dominance is examined. The subject is a three-year-old Danish/English bilingual who code-switches at the morpheme level even though she has never been exposed to a code-switching bilingual community. Co-occurrence restrictions…

This monograph presents language factors related to bilingualism, to assist educators to distinguish normal phenomena due to bilingualism from symptoms of a handicapping condition. The first section, called "The Nature of Bilingualism," discusses the diversity of bilingual students and their dynamic use of two languages, focusing on simultaneous…

The lives of many families involve contact with more than one language and culture on a daily basis. This book is aimed at the many parents and professionals who feel uncertain about the best way to go about helping children gain maximum benefit from the situation. Every family's situation is different, but there is much parents can do to make…

This article examines issues in language assessment in children exposed to two languages, including arrested language development in preschool children, arrested development and language loss in school-age children, effects of educational policy (especially the devaluation of non-English languages) on bilingualism, problems in primary language…

The validity of the theory of crucial similarity in language interference is investigated. The theory proposes that when a first and a second language are structurally similar in some aspects, the second language learner will assume similarity in other aspects, causing interference. In this study, the German of first grade students whose teacher…

The phonological switching processes of 16 bilingual (Spanish-English) adults were observed to provide phonological evidence for the coordinate/compound theory of bilingualism. Each subject was categorized as a coordinate or compound based on responses to a questionnaire. Subjects were recorded reading a mixed list of Spanish and English words.…

This compilation of articles deals with practical questions of bilingualism that appear to be important to the development of education in Britain. The conference for which the papers were originally prepared concentrated on three general aspects: the existence of many thousands of bilingual children in Britain whose native languages are largely…

This is a report on a child's English and French speech before, during and after a summer vacation in France. The findings are based on recorded samples of her speech in both languages elicited at three times: (1) immediately preceding the trip at age 3 years, 8 months; (2) 2 and l/2 months later; and (3) again 2 and l/2 months after her return to…

Concerns that parents might have about raising their children bilingually are addressed, and a case study of an Australian family pursuing this course over an 8-year period is presented. In addition, relevant research into bilingualism is cited. Bilingualism means having command of two languages, and bilinguals can range from the rare equilingual…