Francis B.

Tatel
Castro
MA English Studies (Language)

Dr. Maria Corazon

English 261

Language Development of Bilinguals and Monolinguals

The value of learning additional languages has grown during the past 20
years as a result of globalization in many spheres of human lives. Consequently,
bilingualism has become the norm in modern society. Studies reveal that
bilingualism results in personal, social and professional advantages. Nevertheless,
parents still expressed apprehension about raising or educating children
bilingually (Beardsmore, 2003). Parents fears are often founded on four myths:
(1) the myth of the monolingual brain; (2) the myth of time-on-task; (3) the myth
of bilingualism and language impairment; and (4) the myth of minority language
children. Parents who raise their children bilingually or think about raising them
bilingually are often concerned that children exposed to two languages will be
confused and be unable to separate the two languages. They are worried that this
will cause delays in psycholinguistic development in particular and cognitive
development in general. Parents have the misconception that learning two
languages during infancy places additional burdens on the brain compared with
acquiring a single language (Genesee, 2009). There is as yet no empirical basis
for the claim that, as a group, bilingual childrens language development is
delayed in comparison with that of monolingual children (De Houwer, 2002). What
parents are not aware of is the fact that children are born with the ability to be
bilingual or multilingual as there is more than enough room in the brain for two
or more languages (Welsh Language Board).
Bilingual language acquisition is as effortless, efficient, and successful as
monolingual acquisition (Bialystok et al., 2009). An adequate number of studies of

bilingual children have indicated that the acquisition of multiple languages is a seamless
process that unfolds naturally and without complications (Fish and Morford, 2012).
Bilingual children learn two languages as easily as they learn one. It is now known
that they go through the primary language development process in fundamentally
similar ways that monolinguals do (De Houwer , 2002). This is possible because
bilingual children achieve language milestones at similar ages with the
monolingual in terms lexical, grammatical and phonological development.# #

Lexical Development
Studies have shown that milestones of lexical acquisition in bilingual and
monolingual children are generally similar. For instance, Genesee (2003) as cited
by Genesee and Nicoladis (2005) and by Poulin-Dubois et al. (2012) found out in a
study that bilingual children produce their first words at about the same time as
monolingual children, which is 12 to 13 months. De Houwer (2002) supported this
claim when she found out in her study that both bilingual and monolingual
children start off with a very small expressive vocabulary that gradually increases
in size. Moreover, she stated that just like monolingual children, bilingual ones
first words may refer to concrete objects, actions, and a few perceptual qualities
of objects.
Genesee and Nicoladis (2005) asserted that bilingual childrens rates of
vocabulary acquisition generally fall within the range reported for same-age
monolinguals, and the distribution of lexical categories (e.g., noun, verb, etc.) in
the early lexicons of bilingual children is similar to that observed in monolingual
children (Nicoladis, 2001 as cited Genesee and Nicoladis, 2005). As Bialystok et al.
(2009) have explained, doubling a childs input would not result in doubling the
rate of language acquisition. For instance, in a study that focused on the lexical
development of 29 FrenchPortuguese bilingual children, dos Santos and Kern

(n.d.) found that the FrenchPortuguese bilinguals of the study dont exhibit any
lexical development delay compared to their monolingual French peers. Moreover,
their total vocabulary (French + Portuguese) exceeds the vocabulary of
monolinguals. In a parallel study, SpanishEnglish bilingual childrens total
vocabulary scores are very similar to monolingual childrens single vocabulary
scores in the period between 22 and 30 months, and a measure of total
vocabulary in bilinguals identifies a similar proportion of children using
monolingual norms (Bialystok et al., 2009).
Although several studies have shown that bilinguals generally have a smaller
vocabulary in each language than do monolingual children learning only a single
language, this is not evidence that bilingualism hinders or delays early language
learning (Hoff and Core, 2015). It just shows that the amount of time influences a
bilinguals total vocabulary size; the greater the exposure, the wider the
vocabulary (David & Wei, 2008; Pearson et al., 1997 as cited Poulin-Dubois, et al.,
2012). Hence, estimates of vocabulary size need to be accompanied by detailed
information about language exposure history (Poulin-Dubois, et al., 2012). In the
early stages of language development, bilingual children appear to acquire
vocabulary words at a rate similar to that of monolingual children, yet their
vocabulary knowledge is divided between two languages. As a result, in the early
stages of vocabulary development bilingual children may know fewer words in
each language, perhaps as much as 30 or 50% less (Pearson, 2007). For instance,
when linguists measured the expressive language of school-aged bilinguals, they
found that they tend to have a smaller size of expressive vocabulary as
compared with their monolingual peers (Yan & Nicoladis, 2009). Nevertheless,
linguists and psychologists found a scientific explanation for this seeming delay in
vocabulary acquisition of bilingual children.
The total vocabulary of bilingual children are divided into two. Two recent
studies can be cited to illustrate that bilingual children are by no means poor word
learners; that their total lexicons counting both languagesare considerably
larger than those of monolinguals for reception and generally equivalent for
production (Pearson, 2007). One of these studies was conducted in Canada. The
researchers studied the amount of vocabulary used in school and at home of
around 1000 bilingual children. After the study, it has been demonstrated that
bilingual children differed from the monolinguals only on vocabulary used in the
home, but not on vocabulary used in school. This discrepancy is significant to be
considered because it shows that bilingual children learn the vocabulary they are
exposed to; however, the types of words used at home and in school are not
always the same which is why bilinguals and monolinguals dont always perform
equally on a monolingual assessment (Fish and Morford, 2012).
Another recent study was by Barac and Bialystok (2012). They found that
bilingual children do not have lower English vocabulary scores than English
monolinguals. When bilinguals are schooled in English, their socio-economic
status is matched with monolinguals, and there are similarities between the two
languages of the bilingual. In this study, SpanishEnglish bilinguals obtained
scores comparable with monolinguals and outperformed both FrenchEnglish and
CantoneseEnglish bilinguals on English receptive vocabulary. All children were
from homes with comparable socio-economic status. Both SpanishEnglish and
CantoneseEnglish bilinguals were being schooled in English, while the French
English were schooled in French. This study suggests that both language similarity
and language of schooling contribute to bilingual childrens vocabulary
performance. Thus, when examining the vocabulary performance of dual
language learners, researchers need to consider a number of factors such as the
similarities between the two languages, the language of the childs school
experience, and the quality and quantity of the childs exposure to each language.
Several studies that have analyzed the vocabulary composition of bilingual
childrens lexicon have found that bilingual children showed distributions much

like those described for monolingual children (Conboy and Thal 2006; David and
Wei 2008; Holowka, Brosseau-Lapr, and Petitto 2002; Levey and Cruz 2003;
Pearson et al. 1997 as cited by Sandhofer and Uchikoshi, 2012).
In summary, although the rate of single language growth lags behind that of
monolinguals, bilingual childrens rate of total vocabulary growth is equal to or
even greater than monolingual childrens rate of total vocabulary growth.
Statistically speaking, total vocabulary of bilingual children was similar to that of
the monolingual children.

Morphosyntactic Development
Aside from vocabulary, the bilingual childrens course of grammatical growth
looks very much like the trajectory followed by monolingual children. The
relationship between vocabulary and grammatical growth in each language
replicate the monolingual pattern (Conboy & Thal, 2006; Parra, Hoff, & Core, 2011
as cited by Ramrez and Kuhl, 2016).
Bilingual children go through the process of language development at the
same age with their counterpart monolingual. Findings from research on BFLA
support this claim. According to De Houwer (2002), detailed comparisons between
bilingual and monolingual childrens morphosyntactic development so far have
been undertaken for Basque, Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish, and it
has been observed that there are quite detailed similarities to be noted for
bilingual and monolingual children concerning the developmental course of one
specific language for morphosyntactic phenomena. For example, striking
similarities manifest in the English morphosyntactic structures used by a bilingual
child and a monolingual child of approximately the same age. Fish and Morford
(2012) asserted that bilingual children acquire the grammar of their two
languages just as early as monolingual children do. It is mostly impossible to say
on the basis of a corpus of lexically English utterances by a three-year-old
whether they were produced by a bilingual or a monolingual child (De Houwer,
2002). This, generally indicate that bilingual children exhibit the same rate of
learning morphosyntactic development as monolingual children (De Houwer,
2005; Nicoladis & Genesee, 1997; Paradis & Genesee, 1996).
As with monolinguals, the age at which specific constructions are mastered
depends on the complexity of the language and the amount of exposure to that
language (Sarah Fish and Jill P. Morford, 2012). Depending on the language that is
being acquired, both may use a number of bound morphemes at a very early
stage in development, and will increase their repertoire as they grow older. Just
like in monolingual children, the increase in syntagmatic skills in bilingual children
is accompanied by an increase in the use of bound morphology (De Houwer,
2002). For bilinguals though, learning how to combine words and use grammatical
morphemes in two languages depends on the specific grammars of each
language. Thus, a child may learn to express the possessive, for example, saying
Papas cup in one language while they are still saying the equivalent of Papa
cup in another language (Fish and Morford, 2012).

Phonological Development
Pearson (2007) asserted that many early language milestones are similar,
regardless of which language children are learning, or how many languages they
are learning. Based on a large Bilingual First Language Acquisition research
project in Hamburg Germany (Meisel, 1994), Genesee, Paradis, and Crago (2004:
73) conclude that bilinguals follow the same course and rate as monolinguals in
each language in many aspects of their development, from the sound system to
grammar. Comparatively speaking, bilingual childrens phonological skills and

higher level narrative skills are often closer to monolingual levels than their
vocabulary and grammar (Hoff and Core, 2015).
A very robust finding from cross-linguistic research to date is that normally
developing (monolingual) children tend to follow a very similar path on their way
towards speaking like the people around them. The available data suggests that
bilingual children develop their phonologies in generally the same way as
monolingual children. Summarily, the phonological system in production starts
from a small number of phonemes and is slowly expanded in a course of
development in which substitution processes initially play a large role (De Houwer,
2002). According to Fenson et al. (1994) as cited by Pearson (2007), at around 6
months of age mature babbling typically appears, first words around 12-14
months, and first two-word combinations around 18-25 months. Both monolingual
and bilingual children undergo the same processes at a similar timetable is
observed for bilinguals.
Word learning is a major milestones in language development for which
substantial data exist for both monolingual and bilingual children (Costa &
Sebastin-Galls, n.d.). It is the most salient evidence in psycholinguistic
literature for childrens progress in language acquisition. As with the developing
phonological system, the basic milestones associated with this achievement are
similar for children learning one or more languages (Bialystok et al., 2009).
One of the best-described early stages of monolingual development is the
establishment of the phoneme repertoire. Most phonemes become established
during the second half of the first year of life, and on the approach to this
milestone, infants show decreasing sensitivity to speech sounds that are not
present in their environment and an increasing sensitivity to speech sounds that
are associated with the language(s) they are exposed to. The available evidence
reveals that there are no major differences in the time required by bilinguals and
monolinguals to establish their phoneme repertoires, even though bilinguals in
fact learn two sets of phonemes. The time it takes to establish the phoneme
repertoire in bilinguals is remarkable given that, in monolinguals, low frequency
phonemes take longer to become established than highly frequent ones. Indeed,
one may have expected that bilingualism would induce a general delay in the
acquisition of the phoneme repertoire, as presumably bilinguals receive less
exposure in any one of their languages than monolinguals do in their one
language (Costa and Sebastin-Galls).
By 9 months of age, monolingual infants discriminate sequences of sounds
that occur in their native language from sequences that do not. For linguists to
know if bilingual infants are also capable of discriminating sequences of sounds
that occur in their native language from sequences that do not, a study was
conducted which compared the sensitivity of 10-month old monolinguals and
bilinguals in differentiating possible and impossible word endings in their
language. The results showed that monolinguals and bilinguals exhibited an
equivalent capacity to differentiate possible and impossible word endings in their
shared language provided it was the dominant language in the bilinguals
environment (Costa & Sebastin-Galls).
There are also recent studies that suggest that bilingual infants brain
responses show that they are learning two languages by 12 months of age. Again
this indicated that they are on the same timetable as monolingual infants learning
one language (Ramrez and Kuhl, 2016 citing Ramrez et al., 2016)
Soon after the babbling period, both bilingual and monolingual children start
off their conventionally meaningful language production using single word
sentences or holophrases (De Houwer, 2002). The childs first word appears on

average at about one year old, regardless of how many languages are in the
environment (Pearson, Fernandez, & Oller, 1993 as cited by Bialystok et al.,
2009). Ramrez and Kuhl (2016) research findings that young children exposed to
two languages from birth typically begin producing their first syllables and their
first words at the same age as children exposed to a single language corroborated
this claim.
According to De Houwer (2002), from the two-word stage onwards, bilingual
children most of the time speak a clearly identifiable language just like
monolingual children. Just like a monolingual child, a bilingual two-year-old can be
expected to be able to carry on a brief but largely comprehensible conversation
with a familiar adult using an occasional two-word utterance. Aside from this
finding, studying speech errors, De Houwer also found out that both monolingual
and bilingual children use strange sounding neologisms. Moreover, both groups
commit overextension, underextension, overgeneralisation, reversals, and
reduplications.
A very robust finding from cross-linguistic research to date is that normally
developing (monolingual) children tend to follow a very similar path on their way
towards speaking like the people around them (De Houwer, 2002). Based on
currently available data, monolingual and bilingual infants are comparable in their
capacities to discriminate languages, to learn phoneme repertoires and to learn
words. Certainly, the available evidence suggests that bilingualism does not seem
to compromise in any significant manner language acquisition.
There is no evidence to suggest that it's any harder for a child to acquire two
languages than it is for the child to acquire one language. As long as people are
regularly speaking with the child in both languages, the child will acquire them
both easily. A child doesn't have to be exceptional or have any special language
ability to become bilingual; as long as the child is exposed to two languages
throughout early childhood, he or she will acquire them both. Some people worry
that learning more than one language is bad for a child, but nothing could be
further from the truth. In fact, there are a lot of advantages to knowing more than
one language. For instance, many linguists feel that knowing a second language
actually benefits a child's cognitive development. There is no evidence that
bilingual children learn to speak later.
We now know that infants have the innate capacity to learn two languages
from birth and that this early dual language exposure does not delay development
in either language. Recent research suggests that the development of two
languages benefits the brain through the development of greater brain tissue
density in areas related to language, memory, and attention. Young children
learning two languages also have more neural activity in the parts of the brain
associated with language processing. This increased brain activity and neural
density may have long-term positive effects on specific types of cognitive abilities,
such as those that require focusing on the details of a task and knowing how
language is structured and used.

References:
Developing bilingualism in children Advice for health and childcare professionals
in Wales WELSH LANGUAGE BOARD
Bialystok et al., (2009). Bilingual Minds.
Hoff and Core. (2015). What Clinicians Need to Know about Bilingual Development
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Ramrez, N. and Kuhl, P. (2016). Bilingual Language Learning in Children
Fish, S. and Morford, J. (2012). The Benefits of Bilingualism: Impacts on Language
and Cognitive Development.
Houwer, A. (2002). How Different are Monolingual and Bilingual Acquisition?
How does the bilingual experience sculpt the brain? Albert Costa (1,2) & Nria
Sebastin-Galls (1)
Pearson, B. (2007). Children with Two Languages.
Conboy, B. (2013). Neuroscience Research: How Experience with One or More
Languages Affects the Developing Brain.
Genesee, F. and Nicoladis, E. (2005). Bilingual First Language Acquisition.
Sandhofer and Uchikoshi. (2012). Cognitive Consequences of Dual Language
Learning: Cognitive Function, Language and Literacy, Science and Mathematics,
and SocialEmotional Development
Dos Santos & Kern (n.d.) Early Lexical Development of FrenchPortuguese
bilingual children: a CDIAdaptation study
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young bilinguals
Genesee, F. (2009). Early childhood bilingualism: Perils and possibilities.
Espinosa, L. (2008). Challenging Common Myths About Young English Language
Learners