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Simultaneous bilingualism is a form of bilingualism that takes place when a child becomes bilingual by learning two languages from birth. According to Annick De Houwer, in an article in The Handbook of Child Language, simultaneous bilingualism takes place in “children who are regularly addressed in two spoken languages from before the age of two and who continue to be regularly addressed in those languages up until the final stages” of language development. Both languages are acquired as first languages. This is in contrast to sequential bilingualism, in which the second language is learned not as a native language but a foreign language.



Prevalence
It is estimated that half of the world is functionally bilingual, and the majority of those bilinguals are ‘native speakers’ of their two languages. Wölck has pointed out that there are many “native bilingual communities,” typically in South America, Africa, and Asia, where “monolingual norms may be unavailable or nonexistent."

Beliefs about simultaneous bilingualism
Some popular misconceptions about bilingualism include the ideas that bilingual children will not reach proficiency in either language and that they will be cognitively disadvantaged by their bilingualism. Many studies in the early 20th century found evidence of a “language handicap” in simultaneously bilingual children, linking bilingualism with a lower intelligence. However, many of these studies had serious methodological flaws. For example, several studies relating bilingualism and intelligence did not account for socioeconomic differences among well-educated, upper class monolingual children and less-educated (often immigrant) bilingual children.

Some recent research on simultaneous bilinguals has actually found some evidence that they have a cognitive advantage over their monolingual counterparts, particularly in the areas of cognitive flexibility, analytical skill, and metalinguistic awareness. However, most studies agree that simultaneous bilinguals do not have any definitive cognitive edge over monolinguals.

Despite these findings, many therapists and other professionals still believe simultaneous bilingualism to be harmful for a child’s cognitive development. Some bilingual families have chosen to stop speaking a language after hearing about the supposed negative developmental effects of child bilingualism from people in authority.

Bilingual Acquisition
According to De Houwer, there is no established normal development pattern for simultaneous bilinguals. However, similar language development patterns have been seen in bilingual and monolingual children.

Language input in Bilingual Acquisition
The most influential factor in bilingual language acquisition is the languages spoken by parents to their children, and the languages spoken by other with whom the child comes into contact. This language exposure is called comprehensible input. Kessler has claimed that “children develop faster in the language which is used most in their environment”, which may or may not reflect the language of the surrounding community. However, bilingual acquisition can also be affected by the amount of input, the separation of input, and the stability of input, as well as attitudes about bilingualism.

Amount of Language Input
It is important to consider amount of input, because not only do the languages of each person affect on bilingualism; the amount of time each main input carrier spends with the child also has an effect.

Separation of Language Input
There is a spectrum ranging from zero to total separation of language by person. Usually, a simultaneous bilingual child’s situation is somewhere in the middle. Some linguistic experts, dating from the early 20th century, have maintained that the best way to facilitate bilingual acquisition is to have each main input carrier (usually parents) use one and only one language with the child. By having each parent speak one of the two languages, this method (known as the “one person, one language” approach) attempts to prevent the child from confusing the two languages.

However, the lack of language separation by person does not necessarily lead to failure to communicate effectively in two languages. Further studies have shown that a “one person, one language” approach may not be necessary for the early separation of language systems to occur. Children appear to be able to disentangle the two languages themselves.

There has been little research done on other methods of language separation. De Houwer points out that input may be separated by situation, for example: “Finnish spoken by all family members inside the home but Swedish once they are outside."

Input stability
A change in a child’s linguistic environment can trigger “language attrition.” Sometimes, when input for one language is lost before the final stage of development, children may lose their ability to speak the “lost” language. This leaves them able to speak only the other language, yet fully capable of understanding both.

Attitudes
The parents’ expectations and knowledge about language development can be instrumental in raising simultaneously bilingual children. Parental attitudes toward “their roles and linguistic choices” also play a part in the child’s linguistic development. The attitudes of the child’s extended family and friends have been shown to affect successful bilingualism.

Single-System Hypothesis of Bilingual Acquistion
Volterra and Taeschner put forth an influential study in 1978, positing that bilingual children move from a stage where the two languages are lexically mixed into eventual structural differentiation between the languages. They theorized that until age two, a child does not differentiate between languages. This “single-system hypothesis,” as it is called, has been the subject of much debate in the linguistic world Since its publication, the single-system has been discredited, and current linguistic evidence now points to two separate language systems.

Bilingual Acquisition in Comparison with Monolingual Children
The study of simultaneous bilingualism supplements general (monolingual) theories of child language acquisition. It particularly illuminates the critical role of the nature of language input in language development. This indicates that the form of language input must be similarly influential in monolinguals.

Difficulties
However, it has proven difficult to compare monolingual and bilingual development, for a number of reasons:
 * Many languages don’t have much data
 * The data that there is may not represent the normal population of children
 * There are contradictions in the literature concerning normal monolingual development
 * There are a large number of variables between bilingual and monolingual children besides the number of languages they speak
 * It can be difficult to differentiate between universal developmental processes and cases of language transfer

Findings
Meisel claims “there is no reason to believe that the underlying principles and mechanisms of language development [in bilinguals] are qualitatively different from those used by monolinguals." Döpke has hypothesized that communication styles that facilitate monolingual development are a major variable in successful bilingual development. Meisel proposed in a 1990 article that “bilinguals tend to focus more on formal aspects of language and are therefore able to acquire certain grammatical constructions faster than many or most monolinguals."

Dominance
Though the simultaneous bilingual child learns two languages at once, this does not mean that he or she speaks them with identical competence. It is common for one language to become dominant over the other. The dominant language is almost always the language spoken by the greatest number of the people the child interacts with (generally the language the child is educated in). The child sees this language as most effective and begins to favor it.

Code-switching
Code-switching occurs when a child combines more than one language in a single utterance. This phenomenon is also seen in bilingual adults. Bilingual children most often engage in intrasentential code-switching, switching languages in the middle of a sentence. Bilingual children code-switch for several reasons, including the following:

Equivalency Problems
Bilingual children often interject words from the other language when they do not know or cannot remember the equivalent, and when one language has no suitable equivalent in the other. Taeschner found that bilingual children prefer to insert elements of the other language rather than use simplified forms

Social Norms
Code-switching has also been tied to the bilingual child’s socialization process. According to Poplack, a bilingual child code-switches based on the perceived linguistic norms of the situation and the perceived bilingual ability of the hearer.

Parental Interaction
Children will mirror their parents in this aspect of speech. If a child’s parents engage in code-switching in their own speech, this will affect the child’s perception of the appropriateness of mixing languages.

Further Research
There is currently no differentiation of normal and deviant bilingual development.

Further study into the effects of changing a child’s linguistic environment could uncover the minimal input requirements for “sustaining active use potential in a particular language.”

Simultaneous trilingualism is also possible. There is significantly less research in this area than in simultaneous bilingualism. However, trilingual language acquisition in young children has been shown to generally mirror bilingual acquisition.