Unitary Language System: The Unitary Language System Model suggests that, when young bilingual infants are acquiring language capabilities, they go through an initial stage where the languages they are acquiring are represented in a unitary, fused system. Supporters of the model argue that babies treat these two languages as one, and it is not until the age of 3 that individuals are able to differentiate between the two languages. They argue that there are three stages to this: Stage 1 (one lexical system with words from both languages), Stage 2 (one system with different vocabulary for each language, but with the same grammatical rules), and Stage 3 (two languages that are differentiated both by separate vocabularies and grammatical rules). Volterra & Traute are two linguists who studied Lisa, a young Italian-German bilingual child. They identified each of the different stages in her development. For example, during stage 2, Lisa changed whether she said Brillen or occhiali (the words for eyeglasses in German and Italian, respectively), depending on who she was speaking to. Despite appearing to have two separate vocabularies, she often used German rules of possession (the ways of expressing something belongs to you) in Italian sentences.

Separate Development Model: This model argues that languages are independently but simultaneously acquired by young bilingual children, and that there is evidence of this from birth. For example, Byers-Heinlein et al. looked at the reactions of 0 - 5 day old bilingual Tagalog-English and monolingual English babies, when hearing different languages. Both groups were able to distinguish between the two languages, with monolingual babies expressing a preference for their own language.

Tagalog and English have two different stress patterns (the way that speakers predictably place emphasis on certain words or sections of words when speaking), meaning that babies can differentiate between rhythmic classes from birth. Furthermore, De Houwer studied Kate, a young Dutch-English bilingual child, and her findings contradicted those of Volterra & Traute. De Houwer found that Kate mostly used Dutch grammatical features when speaking Dutch. For example, she hardly used gender noun agreement rules when speaking English. In addition, Kate was found to use English and Dutch in the same way as monolingual children her age.

So … are languages acquired independently?: De Houwer acknowledged that, although Kate appeared to be largely acquiring the rules for each language independently, the idea that her brain functioned as ‘two bilinguals in one’ was far too simplistic. For example, Kate often code-switched, changing from language to the other mid-sentence. However, she did this in a way that conformed to the rules and structures of both languages, meaning that there was some relationship between the way the two languages are stored in her brain. The reality is, that even if we accept that bilingual babies acquire languages separately, this does not mean that they are immune to interference. Silva-Corvalán calls this a model of ‘autonomy with interdependence’, meaning that even though bilingual (and monolingual) babies can separate languages, this does not mean that there is no interaction whatsoever. If you are bilingual, what is your experience?

Some common misconceptions about children who are bilingual

An academic introduction to bilingual acquisition

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