The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics

EEarly Bilingualism

ANNICK DE HOUWER

There are two fundamentally different ways in which children under age six become bilingual. First, children may hear two languages from birth in what is known as a bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) setting (Meisel, 1989). BFLA children have no chronologically second language but have two first languages, Language A (LA) and Language Alpha (Lα). These typically are both spoken to them at home. Second, children who are first raised with just a single language at home (Language 1, L1) may start to regularly hear a second language (Language 2, L2) at a later age, typically in a group setting outside the home, such as a daycare center or a preschool. This is an early second language acquisition (ESLA) setting (De Houwer, 1990). BFLA settings have been found to be about three times as common as ESLA settings where the L2 is a societal language (De Houwer, 2018a).

This entry first describes major linguistic developments in BFLA and ESLA in children under the age of six (early foreign language acquisition is not discussed). After that, early child bilingualism is considered from a more applied perspective. Although there is growing interest in studying trilingualism, the bulk of the relevant studies concerns two oral languages. The little research on children growing up with an oral and a signed language suggests that early bimodal bilingual development proceeds similarly to early unimodal bilingual development, except that bimodal bilinguals ...