Dual language exposure and early bilingual development

The extant literature includes conflicting assertions regarding the influence of bilingualism on the rate of language development. The present study compared the language development of equivalently high-SES samples of bilingually and monolingually developing children from 1;10 to 2;6. The monolingually developing children were significantly more advanced than the bilingually developing children on measures of both vocabulary and grammar in single language comparisons, but they were comparable on a measure of total vocabulary. Within the bilingually developing sample, all measures of vocabulary and grammar were related to the relative amount of input in that language. Implications for theories of language acquisition and for understanding bilingual development are discussed.