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1 - Infant Bi- and Multilingual Development

from Part One - Becoming and Being a Multilingual Child

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2022

By
Judit Navracsics
Edited by
Anat Stavans  and
Ulrike Jessner
Anat Stavans
Affiliation:
Beit Berl College, Israel
Ulrike Jessner
Affiliation:
Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, Austria
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Summary

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.

Keywords

language discriminationlanguage developmentunitary vs. separated systemscross-linguistic influencesmultilingual awareness
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Childhood Multilingualism , pp. 13 - 37
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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