Infant Bi- and Multilingual Development

Abstract

The evolution and conceptualization of bi- and multilingual child language development is in focus in this chapter. I describe the history of infant bilingualism research related to the unitary vs. separated systems hypotheses. I review the effect of infant bi- and multilingualism on cognitive development. In the description of language perception, I rely on neurolinguistic findings, while in the emergence of speech I give a brief analysis of the language development of some multilingual children. I provide examples at the phonetic-phonological and lexical levels as well as evidence of multilingual awareness.