Parents and child care personnel in English-dominant parts of the world often express misgivings about raising children bilingually. Their concerns are based on the belief that dual language learning during the infant-toddler stage confuses children, delays their development, and perhaps even results in reduced language competence. In this…

Discusses the modeling hypothesis, in which bilingual children's rates of code mixing are related to rates of mixing in the input addressed to them, and the assumption that children are sensitive to code mixing in the input and can adjust their own rates in accordance with the input. Reports a study of six bilingual toddlers recorded during play…

Discusses explanations regarding bilingual children's codemixing, including that it is influenced by the particular discourse strategies parents use in conversation with their children. Five French-English bilingual families in Montreal were examined for parental style of response, children's rates of codemixing, and effects of responses on…

Examined language differentiation in bilingual toddlers prior to the emergence of functional categories. The children were observed with each parent separately and both together. Results indicate that while these children did code mix, they were able to differentiate between their two languages. There was some evidence that language dominance…