Bilingual Language Acquisition: Where Does the Difference Lie?

Studies of preverbal infants exposed to a bilingual environment have unveiled the existence of important similarities, but also significant differences in the way monolinguals-to-be and bilinguals-to-be solve the problem of language acquisition. In this paper, I review these studies and I argue that some apparent bilingual failures are the consequence of experimental designs conceived to test monolingual infants. When properly analyzed, these data provide evidence for successful solutions to learning 2 languages and to become a competent adult bilingual speaker. Copyright (C) 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel