It gives me great pleasure to introduce this Special Issue of Applied Psycholinguistics. One might say that it was very Canadian in its conception. The period between Christmas and New Years 2004 was particularly cold in Montreal and Toronto. It was during this very cold snap that Ellen Bialystok, Fred Genesee, and I decided to apply to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for special funding to host a conference on bilingualism. To make matters worse, one of our universities only heated its offices to the bare minimum during the holidays, and Ellen Bialystok's furnace broke down. With cold fingers, time running short, and the holiday period in full swing, we nevertheless managed to contact a dozen leading researchers from several countries who consented to become main speakers at the conference, Language Acquisition and Bilingualism: Consequences for a Multilingual Society, held in Toronto in May 2006 (a much warmer event). These researchers were joined by more than 300 people from 34 countries around the world, 119 of whom presented posters of their research (chosen from 250 submissions). The eager response of our research and practitioner communities for the conference and the compelling importance of the policy, educational, and program implications of bilingualism in a global context convinced me, as Editor of the Journal, that we should share the interest of the conference with you, the readers of Applied Psycholinguistics. This Special Issue contains articles by a number of the conference's speakers, and it was jointly edited by Ellen Bialystok and me with the help of Fred Genesee.

Language is the key interface between our social and cognitive worlds. As a social tool, it is the means by which human interactions occur, social position is determined, and educational opportunities are defined; as a cognitive instrument, it provides access to concepts and meanings, the logical system for problem solving, and creates the organizational basis for knowledge. It is not an accident that a significant portion of all developmental research is addressed to issues of language acquisition and language performance, that the primary focus of school curricula in the early years is on the language arts, and that an ongoing concern of parents is their children's language acquisition. Language has consequence. However, language acquisition occurs in a context, and differing environments are bound to influence the way language is learned and used by young children. Children growing up in bilingual environments will have different experiences than those who encounter only one language, and these differences may have a profound impact on children's social, cognitive, and linguistic development. Understanding how these linguistic environments affect children's development requires an examination of the interactions between the social and cognitive dimensions of development in different learning environments.

A number of studies have shown that approximately one-quarter of children in potentially bilingual environments do not become bilingual. This article explores several key factors that influence the likelihood that a child who has access to interactions in two languages will learn them both. The five factors discussed are input, language status, access to literacy, family language use, and community support, including schooling. It is argued that the quantity of input has the greatest effect on whether a minority language will be learned, but language status and attitudes about language also play a role. When families are proactive and provide daily activities for children in the minority language, the children respond by learning it. In addition, dual-immersion, “two-way” schooling is shown to benefit children's level of language proficiency in the minority language without diminishing their progress in the community language.

This article reports on a study that addresses the following question: why do some children exposed to two languages from early on fail to speak those two languages? Questionnaire data were collected in 1,899 families in which at least one of the parents spoke a language other than the majority language. Each questionnaire asked about the home language use of a family consisting of at least one parent and one child between the ages of 6 and 10 years old. The results show that the children in these families all spoke the majority language, but that minority language use was not universal. Differences in parental language input patterns used at home correlated with differences in child minority language use. Home input patterns where both parents used the minority language and where at most one parent spoke the majority language had a high chance of success. The “one parent–one language” strategy did not provide a necessary nor sufficient input condition. Implications for bilingual families are discussed.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relations between early bilingualism and phonological awareness in a sample of 75 Turkish–Dutch bilingual kindergarten children living in The Netherlands. In a longitudinal design, the children's first (L1) and second (L2) language abilities were measured at the beginning and end of kindergarten. At the end of kindergarten, the children's metalinguistic skills within the domain of phonological awareness were also assessed. Linear structural equation modeling was used to examine the types of intralingual (language-specific) and interlingual (language-transfer) processes over time. In addition, just how the patterns of bilingual development related to the children's later phonological awareness was examined. Turkish was found to be the dominant language on both measurement occasions. In addition to the expected longitudinal relations, there was evidence for transfer from L1 to L2. Two interrelated phonological factors emerged: phonotactic awareness and phonemic awareness. Variation in the two types of children's phonological awareness was predicted by both L1 and L2 abilities.

Gestures are often used while speaking to aid in the speaker's packaging of the verbal message and/or to aid the listener in decoding the message. The ways in which bilinguals use gestures are reviewed in this article. Researchers have predicted that bilinguals' gesture use is related to bilinguals' language proficiency. However, no clear pattern of a link between proficiency and gesture use has been observed across studies, probably because gestures rarely compensate for weak language proficiency, functioning instead to facilitate speech production in both first and second language use. Researchers have reported bilinguals using language-specific gestures in the other language. In addition, bilinguals have been shown to use gestures at a higher rate than monolinguals. These results suggest that cross-linguistic transfer can apply to gestures, as well as to other linguistic units. In conclusion, gestures play an important role in accessing language in the process of speech production. This conclusion has implications for second-language teaching; teaching through gestures and speech might be more effective than teaching the spoken component alone.

The development of native language phonetic representations in bilingual infants was compared to that of monolingual infants. Infants (ages 6–8, 10–12, and 14–20 months) from English–French or English-only environments were tested on their ability to discriminate a French and an English voice onset time distinction. Although 6- to 8-month-olds responded similarly irrespective of language environment, by 10–12 months both groups of infants displayed language-specific perceptual abilities: the monolinguals demonstrated realignment to the native English boundary whereas the bilinguals began discriminating both native boundaries. This suggests that infants exposed to two languages from birth are equipped to phonetically process each as a native language and the development of phonetic representation is neither delayed nor compromised by additional languages.

Children raised in the home as English or Welsh monolinguals or English–Welsh bilinguals were tested on untrained word form recognition using both behavioral and neurophysiological procedures. Behavioral measures confirmed the onset of a familiarity effect at 11 months in English but failed to identify it in monolingual Welsh infants between 9 and 12 months. In the neurophysiological procedure the familiarity effect was detected as early as 10 months in English but did not reach significance in monolingual Welsh. Bilingual children showed word form familiarity effects by 11 months in both languages and also revealed an online time course for word recognition that combined effects found for monolingual English and Welsh. To account for the findings, accentual, grammatical, and sociolinguistic differences between English and Welsh are considered.

Past research demonstrates that first language (L1)-like competence in each language can be attained in simultaneous acquisition of bilingualism by mere exposure to the target languages. The question is whether this is also true for the “weaker” language (WL). The WL hypothesis claims that the WL differs fundamentally from monolingual L1 and balanced bilingual L1 and resembles second language (L2) acquisition. In this article, these claims are put to a test by analyzing “unusual” constructions in WLs, possibly indicating acquisition failure, and by reporting on analyses of the use of French by bilinguals whose dominant language is German. The available evidence does not justify the claim that WLs resemble L2. Instead, it shows that WL development can be delayed, but does not suggest acquisition failure. Finally, reduced input is unlikely to cause acquisition failure. The fundamental issue at stake is to explore the limits of the human language making capacity.

Inuktitut, the Eskimo language spoken in Eastern Canada, is one of the few Canadian indigenous languages with a strong chance of long-term survival because over 90% of Inuit children still learn Inuktitut from birth. In this paper I review existing literature on bilingual Inuit children to explore the prospects for the survival of Inuktitut given the increase in the use of English in these regions. Studies on code mixing and subject realization among simultaneous bilingual children ages 2–4 years show a strong foundation in Inuktitut, regardless of extensive exposure to English in the home. However, three studies of older Inuit children exposed to English through school reveal some stagnation in children's Inuktitut and increasing use of English with age, even in nonschool contexts. I conclude that current choices about language use at the personal, school, and societal levels will determine whether Inuit are able to reach and maintain stable bilingualism, or whether Inuktitut will decline significantly in favor of majority languages.

The present paper summarizes three experiments that investigate the effects of age of acquisition on first-language (L1) acquisition in relation to second-language (L2) outcome. The experiments use the unique acquisition situations of childhood deafness and sign language. The key factors controlled across the studies are age of L1 acquisition, the sensory–motor modality of the language, and level of linguistic structure. Findings consistent across the studies show age of L1 acquisition to be a determining factor in the success of both L1 and L2 acquisition. Sensory–motor modality shows no general or specific effects. It is of importance that the effects of age of L1 acquisition on both L1 and L2 outcome are apparent across levels of linguistic structure, namely, syntax, phonology, and the lexicon. The results demonstrate that L1 acquisition bestows not only facility with the linguistic structure of the L1, but also the ability to learn linguistic structure in the L2.

Bilingualism is often considered an inappropriate developmental choice for children with specific language impairment (SLI) because, according to a widespread belief, these children's limited capacity for language would be overtaxed by learning two linguistic systems. However, there has not been adequate empirical investigation of SLI in bilingual children to support, or refute, this belief and the professional practices that are based on it. On the theoretical side, two opposing perspectives concerning the nature of the deficit in SLI make different predictions for the outcome of children with SLI learning two languages, and one set of predictions is consistent with the popular belief stated above. This article is aimed at addressing both the applied concerns and the theoretical debate with evidence from two studies examining the morphological acquisition of French–English bilingual children with SLI as compared to French and English monolinguals with SLI.