Bilingualism in infancy: first steps in perception and comprehension

by: Janet F Werker, Krista Byers-Heinlein

Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Vol. 12, No. 4. (April 2008), pp. 144-151.

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Abstract

Many children grow up in bilingual families and acquire two first languages. Emerging research is advancing the view that the capacity to acquire language can be applied equally to two languages as to one but that bilingual and monolingual acquisition nonetheless differ in some nontrivial ways. To probe the first steps toward acquisition, researchers recently have begun to use experimental methods to study preverbal bilingual infants. We review the literature in this growing field, focusing on how infants growing up bilingual use surface acoustic information to separate, categorize and begin to learn their two languages. These new data invite the expansion of standard linguistic theories to account for how a single architecture can support the acquisition of two languages simultaneously.

@article{citeulike:2621544, abstract = {Many children grow up in bilingual families and acquire two first languages. Emerging research is advancing the view that the capacity to acquire language can be applied equally to two languages as to one but that bilingual and monolingual acquisition nonetheless differ in some nontrivial ways. To probe the first steps toward acquisition, researchers recently have begun to use experimental methods to study preverbal bilingual infants. We review the literature in this growing field, focusing on how infants growing up bilingual use surface acoustic information to separate, categorize and begin to learn their two languages. These new data invite the expansion of standard linguistic theories to account for how a single architecture can support the acquisition of two languages simultaneously.}, author = {Werker, Janet F. and Byers-Heinlein, Krista }, citeulike-article-id = {2621544}, doi = {10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.008}, journal = {Trends in Cognitive Sciences}, keywords = {bilingualism, semantic-development, word-learning}, month = {April}, number = {4}, pages = {144--151}, posted-at = {2008-04-02 01:44:31}, priority = {5}, title = {Bilingualism in infancy: first steps in perception and comprehension}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.008}, volume = {12}, year = {2008} }

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TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2621544 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2621544 TI - Bilingualism in infancy: first steps in perception and comprehension JF - Trends in Cognitive Sciences VL - 12 IS - 4 SP - 144 EP - 151 N2 - Many children grow up in bilingual families and acquire two first languages. Emerging research is advancing the view that the capacity to acquire language can be applied equally to two languages as to one but that bilingual and monolingual acquisition nonetheless differ in some nontrivial ways. To probe the first steps toward acquisition, researchers recently have begun to use experimental methods to study preverbal bilingual infants. We review the literature in this growing field, focusing on how infants growing up bilingual use surface acoustic information to separate, categorize and begin to learn their two languages. These new data invite the expansion of standard linguistic theories to account for how a single architecture can support the acquisition of two languages simultaneously. KW - bilingualism KW - semantic-development KW - word-learning AU - Werker, Janet AU - Byers-Heinlein, Krista PY - 2008/04// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.01.008 ER -

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