Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (2001) 21, 153–168. Printed in the USA.

Copyright © 2001 Cambridge University Press 0267-1905/01 $9.50

9. BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: EXPLORING THE

LIMITS OF THE LANGUAGE FACULTY*

Fred Genesee

Most general theories of language acquisition are based on studies of

children who acquire one language. A general theory of language
acquisition must ultimately accommodate the facts about children who
acquire two languages simultaneously during infancy. This chapter
reviews current research in three domains of bilingual acquisition:
pragmatic features of bilingual code-mixing, grammatical constraints on
child bilingual code-mixing, and bilingual syntactic development. It
examines the implications of findings from these domains for our
understanding of the limits of the mental faculty to acquire language.
Findings indicate that infants possess the requisite neuro-cognitive
capacity to differentially represent and use two languages simultaneously
from the one-word stage onward, and probably earlier. Detailed analyses
of the syntactic organization of bilingual child language indicates,
moreover, that it conforms to the target systems and, thus, resembles that
of children acquiring the same languages monolingually, for the most
part. At the same time, bilingual children acquire the distinctive capacity
to coordinate their two languages in grammatically constrained ways and
in conformity with the target grammars during online production. In
short, current evidence attests to the bilingual capacity of the human mind
and refutes earlier conceptualizations which viewed bilingualism and
bilingual acquisition as burdensome and potentially disruptive to
development.

Language is undoubtedly the most complex faculty of the human mind.

Understanding how language is acquired is a challenge of immense proportions,
one that has provoked intense attention from researchers and theorists for the last
fifty years. The immensity of the task is heightened by the extremely varied types
of language learning that occur—there are child and adult learners, first and second

153
154 FRED GENESEE

language learners, learners of oral and signed languages, and monolingual and
multilingual learners. The lion’s share of attention has focused on children who
grow up learning one (oral) language, most often English. The focus of this
chapter is on language acquisition in children who grow up learning two oral
languages simultaneously, what is often referred to as bilingual first language
acquisition. It is important to point out, however, that multilingual acquisition and
acquisition of signed as well as oral languages are implied (Petitto et al., in press;
Richmond-Welty & Siple, 1999).

In addition to important practical and clinical reasons for studying bilingual

acquisition—that is, to better promote full normal development and treat
pathological development, there are important theoretical reasons. Most current
theories of language acquisition are based on monolingual children and are silent on
the case of bilingual acquisition. A general theory of language acquisition must
ultimately accommodate the facts about bilingual/multilingual acquisition. This is
not of trivial importance since, while we have no “hard” statistics on the number of
children who acquire two or more languages simultaneously from birth onward,
they undoubtedly constitute a significant population worldwide (Tucker, 1998).
Nevertheless, we have scant descriptive information about bilingual acquisition and,
thus, little theoretical understanding of how two languages are acquired
simultaneously. Research is needed to uncover the facts and reconcile general
theories of acquisition with the facts.

Furthermore, investigations of bilingual acquisition permit us to explore

the limits of the language faculty of the human mind. It has been argued that
humans are uniquely prepared to acquire this most complex of abilities (e.g.,
Pinker, 1994). Some have argued that this unique ability resides in an innate and
language-specific module of the mind (Chomsky, 1997) while others have argued
that it is a reflection of the application of general learning mechanisms to the
specific domain of language (Bates & MacWhinney, 1987). At present, neither the
nativist nor cognitivist position deals seriously with the case of bi- or multilingual
acquisition and, thus, leaves unexplored both the capacity of the mind to acquire
different linguistic systems at the same time and the way in which this is
accomplished (see MacWhinney, 1997, for the case of second language
acquisition). This chapter reviews research on three different aspects of bilingual
acquisition that are pertinent to these issues:

1. pragmatic aspects of child bilingual code-mixing;

2. linguistic development of young bilingual children; and
3. grammatical constraints on child bilingual code-mixing.
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 155

Pragmatic Aspects of Child Bilingual Code-Mixing

Early theorists held that, although bilingual children are exposed to

different sets of linguistic input, they go through an initial stage when they have
one linguistic system; the most explicit and earliest version of this hypothesis was
articulated by Volterra and Taeschner (1978). This claim applies to the abstract
knowledge or “competence” that underlies bilingual performance and not to
language performance or behavior itself. According to the unitary language system
hypothesis, differentiation of two linguistic systems during bilingual acquisition
does not begin to occur until approximately three years of age (Genesee, 1989),
and, as a consequence, bilingual children are not really bilingual until around three
years of age. From a neuro-cognitive perspective, this view holds that, during the
initial stages of language development, the language faculty is biologically and,
therefore, fundamentally “monolingual.” By extension, bilingual acquisition
challenges the language faculty because it exceeds its biological predispositions;
therefore, it results in acquisition that differs significantly from that of
monolinguals. Arguably, in the extreme, it also implicates certain costs, such as
delayed language development, linguistic confusion, and/or incomplete
development of either language.

Claims for an initial unitary system have been based on the frequently
reported finding that bilingual children mix elements (phonological, lexical,
morphosyntactic) from their two languages in the same utterance or stretch of
conversation. Code-mixing can occur within the same utterance—for example, one
2-year old French-English bilingual child in our research said “oú car?” (“where
car?”) when searching for a car that he had been playing with; or it can occur from
one utterance to the next in the same conversation—for example, the same child
produced an utterance entirely in French when speaking to his English-speaking
mother. Indeed, anecdotal evidence and most empirical studies indicate that most
bilingual children code-mix during the early stages of development and their mixing
declines with age. The precise rates and patterns of mixing vary from study to
study and probably reflect a host of factors, some of which will be discussed in a
later section (see Genesee, 1989, for a review).

Contrary to the unitary language system hypothesis, current evidence

indicates consistently and clearly that bilingual children can use their developing
languages differentially and appropriately with different interlocutors from the
earliest stages of productive language use. Genesee, Nicoladis, and Paradis (1995),
for example, examined 2-year-old children who were learning French and English
in the home, with the mother using one language predominantly with the child and
the father the other. Although the children code-mixed and often used their
dominant language extensively with both parents, they nevertheless used more of
their mothers’ language with their mothers than with their fathers, and vice versa
for the fathers' language. These findings are corroborated by other researchers
(e.g., DeHouwer, 1990; Lanza, 1997a; Meisel, 1989). In a follow-up study,
Genesee, Boivin, and Nicoladis (1996) found that two-year-old bilingual children in
156 FRED GENESEE

the one-word stage were similarly able to use their two languages differentially with
monolingual strangers. These latter findings are significant because they indicate
that (a) pragmatic differentiation is evident from the earliest (i.e., the one-word)
stage of productive use; and (b) bilingual children have the cognitive capacity to
identify and respond appropriately on-line to important communicative
characteristics of their interlocutors (their bilingual proficiency in this case).

Such differentiated language use is difficult to reconcile with a putative

unitary system insofar as one would expand random use of each language
regardless of the language of the child’s interlocutor if the bilingual child truly
possessed a fused system comprised of elements from two input languages (see
Meisel, in press, for alternative models). These findings also challenge the unitary
system explanation of child bilingual code-mixing. A number of alternative
explanations of mixing have been proposed. They can be classified into two broad
categories—those that are input-based and those that are proficiency-based.
According to input-based explanations, young bilingual children code-mix because
of the input addressed to them by others. Input can influence children’s code-
mixing in at least two ways. First, according to the modeling hypothesis, children
exposed to extensive code-mixing in the language addressed to them by other more
proficient bilinguals (parents and other adults) code-mix more than children
exposed to relatively less mixed input. Indeed, parents who raise their children
bilingually are often counseled to use the one parent/one language rule in order to
avoid code-mixing and the confusion and delays that are mistakenly associated with
early bilingualism. Second, according to the discourse hypothesis (Lanza, 1992),
parents who tolerate child code-mixing use certain discourse acts that indicate to the
child that mixing is acceptable, and they, thereby, permit or even encourage their
child to code-mix more. For example, parents who continue the conversation
following code-mixing by their child indicate that the code-mixed utterance was
understood and is acceptable. Conversely, parents who reply to a child’s mixing by
asking for clarification or by replying that they do not understand indicate that the
child’s mixing was ineffective and undesirable.

To date, the evidence concerning each version of the input hypothesis is

surprisingly limited and largely inconclusive. Goodz (1994) reports positive and
statistically significant correlations between parental and children’s rates of code-
mixing in families in the Montreal area who were raising their children bilingually.
However, Genesee, Nicoladis, and Paradis (1995), also working with bilingual
families in the Montreal area, failed to obtain statistically significant relationships
between parental and children’s rates of code-mixing. Likewise, Lanza (1992)
reports evidence in support of the discourse hypothesis in a case study of a child
raised in Norwegian and English in Norway (see also Deuchar & Quay, 2000),
whereas Nicoladis and Genesee (1998) failed to find statistical evidence in support
of this hypothesis in a study of five children learning English and French
simultaneously.

Virtually all children, except for pathological cases, ultimately acquire the
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 157

language behaviors and conversational norms of the communities in which they

grow up. Undoubtedly, children raised bilingually also eventually acquire the
patterns and forms of code-mixing that occur in their communities as part of their
language socialization (see, Poplack, 1987, for contrasting norms of code-mixing).
The inconclusive evidence reported to date on children’s acquisition of code-mixing
and its relationship to input factors indicates that we are a long way from
understanding how bilingual children are socialized to bilingual patterns of language
usage in their communities, but the question is still important and valid. Clearly,
much additional research is called for.

According to the second broad category of explanations of code-mixing,

the proficiency hypotheses, young bilingual children code-mix to fill linguistic gaps
in their language proficiency. Arguably, a child who says “un petit bird” when
speaking to her French-speaking mother does not know the word for “bird”
(oiseau) in French, but does in English and, therefore, borrows the English word
temporarily to complete her French utterance. Indeed, on occasion, even fully
proficient adult bilinguals do this when they experience a temporary lack of
memory or when an appropriate word or expression does not exist in the language
they are speaking. There is considerable evidence in support of this explanation of
code-mixing. First, it is commonly reported that bilingual children mix more when
using their less proficient language than when using their more proficient language
(Genesee, Nicoladis, & Paradis, 1995). Second, it has been documented that
bilingual children are more likely to mix words for which they do not have
translation equivalents than words for which they do (Deuchar & Quay, 2000;
Nicoladis, 1994; Wolf, Genesee, & Paradis, 1995). The proficiency hypothesis is
also consistent with reports that bilingual children tend to mix less as they get older
(e.g., Redlinger & Park, 1980; Vihman, 1982)—arguably, as they acquire a more
complete stock of words and expressions in both languages, bilingual children need
to borrow less. While these examples have been drawn from the lexical domain,
evidence in support of the proficiency hypothesis has been presented from morpho-
syntactic domains as well. Gawlitzek-Maiwald and Tracy (1996) have argued that
bilingual children use syntactic structures from their more developed language to
bolster use of their less developed language—what they refer to as bilingual
bootstrapping, and Petersen (1988) has argued that inflectional morphology from
the “dominant language” can co-occur with free morphemes from the “non-
dominant language,” but not vice versa.

Returning to the central theme of this chapter, the important point is that
child bilingual code-mixing does not reflect an incapacity of the language faculty to
develop functionally differentiated systems during the initial stages of acquisition.
Code-mixing is more appropriately viewed in terms of performance factors (e.g.,
proficiency) and not in terms of the child’s fundamental underlying competence.
Indeed, the pragmatic performance of bilingual children, even those in the one-
word stage, reveals quite sophisticated pragmatic skills, skills that imply underlying
differentiation, at least at the functional and possibly also at the representational
levels.
158 FRED GENESEE

Linguistic Development: Autonomous or Interdependent?

More direct evidence concerning the nature of bilingual children’s

representations of their developing languages comes from detailed analyses of their
phonological and syntactic development. At issue here is the nature of the abstract
knowledge (or competence) that underlies the bilingual child’s language
performance. The specific question is whether young children exposed to two
languages acquire abstract constraints (or “rules”) that are different for and specific
to each of the target languages. Evidence that they do would provide additional
insights into the capacity of the language faculty and, in particular, its ability to
represent the abstract grammatical properties of different languages during the early
stages of acquisition.

Studies on syntactic development show that bilingual children from as early

as two years of age (or during the two- and early multi-word stages) use language-
specific and different syntactic constructions when addressing interlocutors who
speak different languages (DeHouwer, 1990; Ingram, 1981/82; Meisel, 1989,
1994; Paradis & Genesee, 1996, 1997). Likewise, studies of phonological
development show that bilingual children demonstrate different phonological
patterns in each language even prior to overt use of syntactically-patterned language
(Celce-Murcia, 1978; Johnson & Lancaster, 1998; Paradis, 1996; Schnitzer &
Krasinski, 1994). Thus, contrary to earlier conceptualizations, it is generally
agreed now that the languages of the bilingual child are represented in underlyingly
differentiated ways at least from the beginning of early language production, and
possibly earlier. It is also interesting to note here that research on speech
perception in children raised bilingually (Catalan and Spanish) indicates that they
can discriminate different language-specific phonological contrasts as early as 4½
months of age, prior to the production of their first words (Bosch & Sebastián-
Gallés, in press). Thus, children exposed to two languages appear to possess the
capacity to perceptually discriminate different linguistic systems at birth, a capacity
that is a prerequisite to establishing different representations of two languages.

That young bilingual children have differentiated representations of their

two languages still leaves open the question whether their systems develop
autonomously or interdependently (Paradis & Genesee, 1996). Autonomous
development would be reflected in patterns of acquisition and linguistic
representation that match those of monolingual children acquiring the same
languages. In effect, bilingual children “look like” monolinguals. This is not to
say that they are the same as monolinguals. As we shall see in the next section,
bilingual children clearly have grammatical capacities permitting them to use and
manage their two languages that set them apart from monolinguals. With respect to
the main theme of this chapter, evidence of autonomous development would also be
evidence for the capacity of the language faculty to acquire and represent the
distinct structures and constraints that comprise the grammars of each language.
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 159

Paradis and Genesee (1996) define interdependent development as “the

systemic influence of the grammar of one language on the grammar of the other
language during acquisition, causing differences in a bilingual’s patterns or rates of
development in comparison with a monolingual’s” (Paradis & Genesee, 1996, p.
3). Interdependence could take several forms. First, the simultaneous acquisition
of two languages might pose challenges to the language faculty that could result in
slower development for bilinguals in comparison to monolinguals acquiring the
same languages. While this might influence general development in both
languages, it could also influence development of specific aspects of one or both
languages. For example, children acquiring English and Spanish simultaneously
might be delayed in the obligatory use of subjects in their English as a result of
exposure to Spanish, a language that licenses the omission of subjects in certain
contexts. Second, and in contrast, bilingual acquisition could accelerate language
development in cases where two languages share certain structural properties and
especially structures that normally emerge earlier in one of the languages when
acquired monolingually. For example, for reasons that are not fully understood,
monolingual French-learning children acquire finite verb forms at an earlier age
than monolingual English-learning children (Paradis & Genesee, 1996). Children
acquiring English and French simultaneously might show an accelerated acquisition
of finiteness in their English as a result of the early emergence of finiteness in their
French verbs.

Yet another form of interdependence is transfer, the systematic

incorporation of a linguistic property from one language into the other. For
transfer to be distinguished from acceleration, it would have to result in a deviant
structure or pattern in comparison to the target language—for example, generally
speaking, verbal negatives in English precede the lexical verb (e.g., “I do not like
raspberries.”), but follow it in French (e.g., Je n'aime pas les framboises.”) If
English-French bilingual children were shown to place negatives after lexical verbs
in English and French, this could constitute evidence for transfer and, thus,
interdependent linguistic development.

The languages of bilingual children need not, nor are they likely, to
develop entirely autonomously or interdependently—certain aspects might develop
interdependently while the rest develops autonomously. Furthermore,
interdependence might be characteristic of certain language combinations, but not
others. Indeed, Paradis and Genesee (1996) report that 2- to 3-year-old French-
English bilingual children from Montreal demonstrated no evidence of transfer,
delay, or acceleration in the syntactic development of their languages in comparison
to monolingual controls, even for structures that differ in normal monolingual
acquisition. In contrast, cross-language influences have been noted by Döpke
(2000) in German-English bilingual children, by Hulk and van der Linden (1996)
and Müller (1998) in German-French children, and by Yip and Matthews (2000) in
a Chinese-English child. Döpke (2000) reports that Australian children learning
English and German simultaneously overgeneralized the -VO word order of English
to German which instantiates both -VO and -OV word orders depending on the
160 FRED GENESEE

clausal structure of the utterance. Working within the Competition Model (Bates &
MacWhinney, 1987), Döpke argues that children learning German and English
simultaneously are prone to overgeneralize S-V-O word order in their German
because the -VO order is reinforced on the surface of both the German and the
English input they hear. Hulk and Müller (2000, p. 5), have similarly argued that
“there has to be a certain overlap of the two systems at the surface level” for cross-
linguistic syntactic influence to occur. Structural overlap and ambiguity in the
input have also been invoked as possible explanations in phonological transfer by
Paradis (in press) in a study of the phonological development of French-English 2-3
year olds.

The Döpke, Hulk and Müller, and Paradis explanations, all of which
emphasize the interplay between surface cues in bilingual input and the underlying
structural properties of the languages being learned, highlight the unique challenge
of bilingual acquisition—how to sort out two abstract linguistic systems from input
that often provides ambiguous or inconsistent cues about the distinctive underlying
structural properties of the target languages. It remains to be seen if other factors
are at play in all cases of transfer for, as noted earlier, Paradis and Genesee (1996)
did not find evidence of cross-linguistic influences in the French and English of the
bilingual children they examined, despite the fact that there are features of these
two languages that have the same surface features but different underlying
properties (i.e., subject pronouns are clitics in French but full NPs in English).
Dominance may also be at play in some instances (Matthews, personal
communication).

A great deal of additional investigation is needed to explore the linguistic

development of bilingual children and, in particular, the extent and nature of
transfer, before we can present definitive conclusions. Nevertheless, these early
findings are significant for our understanding of both bilingual acquisition and the
language faculty of the human mind and, thus, are worth considering briefly. To
date, the evidence indicates that, for the most part, the linguistic systems of
bilingual children develop autonomously and like that of monolingual children.
Instances of transfer that have been documented do not compromise this general
conclusion for at least two reasons. First, transfer is temporary. We know from
other research that, given sufficient exposure to two languages, bilingual children
can acquire the same grammatical competence in each of their languages as
monolinguals in the long run (White & Genesee, 1996). Whether or not individual
children exposed to two languages at birth become bilingual is largely a matter of
circumstance rather than of inherent limitations in the language faculty’s ability to
handle two languages at the same time.

Second, and more importantly, the extant evidence indicates that transfer
during bilingual acquisition is restricted to specific aspects of syntax or phonology.
Moreover, although the transferred structures identified by Döpke and Hulk and
Müller deviate from the language that hosts them temporarily, they nevertheless
map onto the child’s developing version of the host language in ways that respect
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 161

its distinct internal structure. Recall that, to date, documented instances of transfer
have involved analogous structures that share features (however, see Yip and
Matthews, in press, for possible counterexamples from an English-Chinese learning
child). For such cross-linguistic transfer to occur, the language faculty, be it
defined in nativist or cognitivist terms, must be capable of active analysis and
comparison of the respective target input systems, albeit in some abstract, implicit
form. Monolingual children also exhibit nontarget constructions that deviate from
adult forms but nevertheless conform to the overall structure of the target language
(e.g., “goed” instead of went). However, the nontarget constructions of
monolingual children are always based on the same system in which they occur. In
contrast, transfer in bilinguals can cross language boundaries. That transfer in
bilingual children is constrained in structure-dependent ways indicates that the
language faculty is able to coordinate different linguistic systems in the course of,
and arguably in the service of, development.

Grammatical Constraints on Child Bilingual Code-Mixing

In the preceding section, we examined the possibility of interactions

between the developing systems of bilingual children with respect to underlying
representations, or competence. In this section, we examine interactions between
the bilingual child’s languages during on-line production and, more specifically,
during intra-utterance code-mixing. Mixing elements or structures from both
languages in the same utterance clearly implicates interactions between the
languages involved. Research on adult bilinguals indicates that their intra-utterance
code-mixing is not random, but is grammatically constrained and, furthermore,
complies with the language-specific characteristics of the participating languages
(Myers-Scotton, 1997; Poplack, 1980). Although there is no consensus on the
nature of the specific constraints that organize intra-sentential code-mixing in
adults, there is consensus that constraints serve to avoid grammatically illicit or
awkward constructions. The evidence indicates, further, that proficient adult
bilinguals engage in more fluent, more sophisticated, and more prevalent code-
mixing than less proficient bilinguals, since fluent mixing arguably calls for full
grammatical competence in the languages involved. It is interesting to note here
that while code-mixing has been linked to bilingual proficiency in the case of
adults, it has been attributed to linguistic incompetence in young bilingual children.

That bilingual children ultimately acquire grammatical constraints on their

code-mixing is attested by studies on adult bilinguals. The questions of concern
here are whether there are structural constraints on child bilingual code-mixing, the
nature of those constraints, and the age at which they are evidenced. Aside from
their specific theoretical significance, these questions address the view that
bilingual acquisition challenges the language faculty and, thus, poses certain risks to
language development since evidence for grammatical constraints during code-
mixing would argue for competence in coordinating two languages during on-line
processing, much like that which has been attested in adult bilinguals.
162 FRED GENESEE

To date, research has examined constraints on intra-utterance code-mixing

by bilingual children learning the following language pairs: French and German
(Köppe, in press; Meisel, 1994); French and English (Genesee & Sauve, 2000;
Paradis, Nicoladis, & Genesee, 2000); English and Norwegian (Lanza, 1997a,b);
English and Estonian (Vihman, 1998); and Inuktitut and English (Allen, Genesee,
Fish, & Crago, 2000). The constraint models of Poplack (1980) and of Myers-
Scotton (1997) have formed the basis for most, although not all, analyses in studies
on this topic (except, see Köppe, in press, and Meisel, 1994, who based their
analyses on more general generativist principles). The Myers-Scotton and Poplack
models differ substantially in the extent to which they refer to abstract, underlying
grammatical constructs (such as system and content morphemes) versus surface
level grammatical phenomena (such as word order and bound versus open class
morphemes), respectively.

Despite the diversity of language pairs and analytic frameworks that

comprise this body of research, all researchers conclude that child bilingual code-
mixing is grammatically constrained. The operation of constraints based on
abstract notions of grammatical knowledge, which are at the core of Myers-
Scotton’s Matrix Language Frame model, is most evident in bilingual children once
they demonstrate such knowledge in their languages (as marked by verb tense and
agreement, for example), usually around 2;6 years of age and older, while the
operation of constraints that reflect surface features of grammar (such as word
order) is evident even earlier in development, prior to overt marking of abstract
grammatical relations in the child’s language, from the two word/morpheme stage
onward. Köppe (in press) has proposed a hybrid model, composed of linear, word
order constraints during the early stages of production and abstract, hierarchically-
organized constraints subsequently.

Research in our laboratory has compared code-mixing in children learning

language combinations that differ in typological similarity: English and French
versus English and Inuktitut (Allen et al., 2000; Genesee & Sauve, 2000).
Although members of different language families, English and French share many
typological characteristics. Both have relatively sparse morphology, particularly
with respect to inflectional morphology; the morphology they have follows a mildly
synthetic pattern. Syntactic relations are indicated primarily through word order,
with the basic word order being SVO. In contrast, Inuktitut, a member of Eskimo-
Aleut family, is polysynthetic, with syntax being marked within the word, both
through extensive inflectional morphology and through a variety of derivational
affixes that change word class. Indeed, Inuktitut has extremely rich morphology,
which includes some 400 derivational affixes and more than 1000 inflectional
affixes. As well, although basic word order is SOV, word order is typically
relatively free, and, in contrast to English, differences in word order are linked to
discourse phenomena rather than to syntactic relations.
Poplack, Wheeler, and Westwood (1987) have found that adult bilinguals
who know similarly contrasting language pairs (English-French versus English-
Finnish) use different patterns of intra-sentential code-mixing. In brief, adult
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 163

English-French bilinguals avoid code-mixing in utterances that contain word order

or morphological contrasts in French and English, whereas adult English-Finnish
bilinguals engage in extensive nonce borrowing. Nonce borrowing is a strategy in
which single lexical items, usually nouns and verbs, from the donor language are
syntactically, morphologically, and sometimes phonologically incorporated into the
host language. In effect, the donor word is treated like a word from the host
language and, thus, avoids the risk of violating the morphosyntactic constraints of
the host language. Our comparisons of English-French and English-Inuktitut
children also revealed differential use of these same code-mixing strategies.

In sum, these findings indicate that there is no fundamental difference

between the constraints on child code-mixing and those that have been attested in
adult bilinguals. Moreover, bilingual children, like adult bilinguals, adopt different
code-mixing strategies in accordance with the typological characteristics of their
languages. Once again, we have evidence that the language faculty is unperturbed
by the complex grammatical challenges posed by bilingual acquisition even during
on-line production. To the contrary, the constrained systematicity that marks early
monolingual acquisition, as well as early bilingual acquisition (as noted earlier), is
also evidenced in the grammatical interactions that occur when the two languages
co-occur in the same utterances during child code-mixing.

Conclusions

Research on children who grow up learning two languages simultaneously

indicates that, contrary to earlier conceptualizations, they acquire differentiated
representations of the target languages early in development, from the one-word
stage onward, and possibly earlier. This conclusion is reinforced by consistent
evidence from a number of researchers that bilingual children can and do use their
developing languages differentially and appropriately with familiar and unfamiliar
interlocutors from the one-word stage of development. Children exposed to two
languages clearly possess the requisite neuro-cognitive competencies that underlie
differential representation and use of two languages from the one-word stage of
development, the earliest stage of productive language use. Studies of speech
perception in children exposed to two languages from birth suggest that they
probably have the cognitive-perceptual capacities that are prerequisite to
establishing simultaneous differentiated representations of more than one language
from the very outset of exposure to two languages.

Detailed analyses of the grammatical organization of bilingual child

language indicates that it conforms with the target systems, taking into account
development. Analyses of child bilingual code-mixing indicate further that it is not
random, but is constrained in essentially the same ways as adult code-mixing and,
most importantly, in conformity with the grammatical properties of the target
languages at the stage of development of the child.

The extant evidence does not mean that bilingual acquisition does not
164 FRED GENESEE

challenge some children. It surely does, just as monolingual acquisition challenges

some children. There is still much to be done to identify the circumstances and
causes that differentiate normal from deviant acquisition, bilingual and
monolingual. Indeed, there is still much to do to extend our understanding of
bilingual acquisition in its diverse forms. This chapter has touched on one
constellation of bilingual acquisition—acquisition of two oral languages in the
home. Bilingual acquisition occurs in different sociocultural contexts, and it entails
different language combinations and modalities (signed and oral). We have barely
begun to explore these diverse forms of bilingual acquisition.

In sum, research findings on bilingual children challenge the notion of the

“monolingual mind” designed to handle only one language system and burdened
with dual or multiple language input. To the contrary, extant results support a view
of the mind that is fundamentally capable of acquiring more than one language at
the same time—thus, a bilingual or even multilingual mind.

Notes

* I would like to thank Martha Crago and Elena Nicoladis for helpful comments on
a draft of this chapter. I would also like to thank the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council, Ottawa, Canada, for funding that has supported my
research on bilingual acquisition cited in this chapter.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cenoz, J., & Genesee, F. (Eds.) (2001). Trends in bilingual acquisition.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

This collection of chapters is based on papers presented at the VIIIth

International Congress for the Study of Child Language in San Sebastian,
Spain, in July 1999. It reflects a broad range of theoretical topics and
state-of-the-art investigations of issues in the field of bilingual acquisition.
Included are papers on infant speech perception, babbling, word learning,
the acquisition of syntax, and the development of communicative
competence. This collection provides a very useful and up-to-date synopsis
of the diverse current trends and findings in the field.

Deuchar, M., & Quay, S. (2000). Bilingual acquisition: Theoretical implications of

a case study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This book presents the findings of a case study in bilingual acquisition and
explores their implications for theories of first and second language
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 165

acquisition. The authors focus on the emergence of two languages

(Spanish and English) during one child’s second year of life. It examines
the process of language learning from the perspectives of phonology,
lexicon, syntax, and language choice and addresses prominent theoretical
issues in each domain. This is an excellent example of the utility of case
studies in language acquisition research.

Genesee, F. (Guest Ed.) (2000). Syntactic aspects of bilingual acquisition. Special

issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3, 167–281.

This special issue of the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition

includes 6 studies on the syntactic development of children acquiring two
languages simultaneously and an Introduction to the issue by the Guest
Editor. Collectively, these studies reveal that the syntactic development of
bilingual children acquiring a variety of languages (French-German,
French-English, English-German, Chinese-English, Catalan-Spanish, and
Swedish-French) conforms for the most part to that demonstrated by
children acquiring the same languages monolingually. At the same time,
there is evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of syntactic features during the
acquisition of languages with ambiguous or overlapping syntactic
properties. Evidence is also reported of grammatical constraints during
bilingual code-mixing indicating that bilingual children, like bilingual
adults, can coordinate the deployment of their grammars during online
production so as to avoid illicit or inappropriate syntactic patterns.

UNANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, S., Genesee, F., Fish, S., & Crago, M. (2000). Grammatical constraints on
early bilingual code-mixing: Evidence from children learning Inuktitut and
English. Unpublished manuscript.
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1987). Competition, variation, and language
learning. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition
(pp. 157-194). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bosch, L., & Sebastián, N. (in press). Early language differentiation in bilingual
infants. In J. Cenoz & F. Genesee (Eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Celce-Murcia, M. (1978). The simultaneous acquisition of English and French in a
two-year-old child. In E. Hatch (Ed.), Second language acquisition: A
book of readings (pp. 38–53). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Chomsky, N. (1997). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
DeHouwer, A. (1990). The acquisition of two languages from birth: A case study.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Döpke, S. (2000). Generation of and retraction from cross-linguistically motivated
structures in bilingual first language acquisition. In F. Genesee (Guest
166 FRED GENESEE

Ed.), Bilingualism, Language and Cognition: Aspects of Bilingual

Acquisition, 3, 209–226.
Gawlitzek-Maiwald, I., & Tracy, R. (1996). Bilingual bootstrapping. Linguistics,
34, 901–926.
Genesee, F. (1989). Early bilingual development: One language or two? Journal of
Child Language, 6, 161–179.
Genesee, F., Boivin, I., & Nicoladis, E. (1996). Talking with strangers: A study of
bilingual children’s communicative competence. Applied Psycholinguistics,
17, 427–442.
Genesee, F., Comeau, L., & Baynton, L. (2000, November). Child bilingual code-
mixing: Does input make a difference? Paper presented at the Boston
University Conference on Language Development.
Genesee, F., Nicoladis, N., & Paradis, J. (1995). Language differentiation in early
bilingual development. Journal of Child Language, 22, 611–631.
Genesee, F., & Sauve, D. (2000, March). Grammatical constraints on child
bilingual code-mixing. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the
American Association for Applied Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Goodz, N. (1994). Interactions between parents and children in bilingual families.
In F. Genesee (Ed.), Educating second language children (pp. 61–81).
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hulk, A., & Müller, N. (2000). Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface
between syntax and pragmatics. In F. Genesee (Guest Ed.), Bilingualism,
Language and Cognition: Aspects of Bilingual Acquisition, 3, 227–244.
Hulk A. C. J., & van der Linden, E. (1996). Language mixing in a French-Dutch
bilingual child. In E. Kellerman et al. (Eds.), EUROSLA 6: A selection of
papers, 89–103.
Ingram, D. (1981/82). The emerging phonological system of an Italian-English
bilingual child. Journal of Italian Linguistics, 2, 95–113.
Johnson, C., & Lancaster, P. (1998). The development of more than one
phonology: A case study of a Norwegian-English bilingual child.
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2, 265–300.
Köppe, R. (in press). Is codeswitching acquired? In J. MacSwan (Ed.),
Grammatical theory and bilingual codeswitching. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Lanza, E. (1992). Can bilingual two year olds code-switch? Journal of Child
Language, 19, 633–658.
Lanza, E. (1997a). Language mixing in infant bilingualism: A sociolinguistic
perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lanza, E. (1997b). Language contact in bilingual two-year-olds and code-

switching: Language encounters of a different kind? International Journal
of Bilingualism, 1, 135–162.
MacWhinney, B. (1997). Second language acquisition and the competition model.
In A. M. B. deGroot & J. F. Kroll (Eds.), Tutorials in bilingualism:
Psycholingusitic perspectives (pp. 113–144). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
 BILINGUAL FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION 167

Meisel, J. (1989). Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In K.

Hyltenstam & L. Obler (Eds.). Bilingualism across the lifespan: In health
and pathology (pp. 13–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Meisel, J. M. (1994). Code-switching in young bilingual children: The acquisition
of grammatical constraints. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 16,
413–441.
Meisel, J. M. (In press). The simultaneous acquisition of two first languages: Early
differentiation and subsequent development of grammars. In J. Cenoz & F.
Genesee (Eds.), Trends in bilingual acquisition. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Müller, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism:
Language and Cognition, 1, 151–171.
Myers-Scotton, C. (1997). Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in
codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nicoladis, E. (1994). Code-mixing in young bilingual children. Unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, Psychology Department, McGill University, Montreal.
Nicoladis, E. & Genesee, F. (1998). Parental discourse and codemixing in bilingual
children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 2, 85–99.
Paradis, J. (1996). Phonological differentiation in a bilingual child: Hildegard
revisited. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, A. & E. H. Zukowksi
(Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Boston University Conference on Language
Development (pp. 528–539). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Paradis, J. (in press). Beyond ‘one system or two’: Degrees of separation between
the languages of French-English bilingual children. In S. Döpke (Ed.),
Cross-linguistic structures in simultaneous bilingualism. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1996). Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children:
Autonomous or interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition,
18, 1–15.
Paradis, J., & Genesee, F. (1997). On continuity and the emergence of functional
categories in bilingual first language acquisition. Language Acquisition, 6,
91–124.
Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E., & Genesee, F. (2000). Early emergence of structural
constraints on code-mixing: Evidence from French-English bilingual
children. In F. Genesee (Guest Ed.), Bilingualism: Syntactic Aspects of
Bilingual Acquisition, 3, 245–262.
Petersen, J. (1988). Word-internal code-switching constraints in a bilingual child’s
grammar. Linguistics, 26, 479–493.
Petitto, L. A., Katerelos, M., Levy, B. G., Gauna, K., Tetreault, K., & Ferraro,
V. (in press). Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth:
Implications for the mechanism underlying early bilingual language
acquisition. Journal of Child Language.
Pinker, S. (1994). The language instinct. New York: Morrow.
Poplack, S. (1980). ‘Sometimes I start a sentence in English y termino en español’:
Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics, 18, 581–618.
168 FRED GENESEE

Poplack, S. (1987). Contrasting patterns of codeswitching in two communities. In

E. Wande, J. Anward, B. Nordberg, L. Steensland, & M. Thelander
(Eds.), Aspects of bilingualism: Proceedings from the Fourth Nordic
Symposium on Bilingualism, 1984 (pp. 51–77). Uppsala: Borgström.
Poplack, S., Wheeler, S., & Westwood, A. (1987). Distinguishing language
contact phenomena: Evidence from Finnish-English bilingualism. In P.
Lilius & M. Saari (Eds.), The Nordic languages and modern linguistics,
(pp. 33–56). Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.
Redlinger, W. E., & Park, T. (1980). Language mixing in young bilinguals.
Journal of Child Language, 7, 337–352.
Richmond-Welty, E. D., & Siple, P. (1999). Differentiating the use of gaze in
bilingual-bimodal language acquisition: A comparison of two sets of twins
of deaf parents. Journal of Child Language, 26, 321–338.
Schnitzer, M., & Krasinksi, E. (1994). The development of segmental phonological
production in a bilingual child. Journal of Child Language, 21, 585–622.
Tucker, G. R. (1998). A global perspective on multilingualism and multilingual
education. In J. Cenoz & F. Genesee (Eds.), Beyond bilingualism:
Multilingualism and multilingual education (pp. 3–15). Clevedon:
Multilingual Matters.
Vihman, M. (1982). The acquisition of morphology by a bilingual child: A whole-
word approach. Applied Psycholinguistics, 3, 141–160.
Vihman, M. (1998). A developmental perspective on codeswitching: Conversations
between a pair of bilingual siblings. International Journal of Bilingualism,
2, 45–84.
Volterra, V., & Taeschner, T. (1978). The acquisition and development of
language by bilingual children. Journal of Child Language, 5, 311–326.
White, L., & Genesee, F. (1996). How native is near native? The issue of ultimate
attainment in adult second language acquisition. Second Language
Research, 12, 233–265.
Wolf, L., Genesee, F., & Paradis, J. (1995). The nature of the bilingual child’s
lexicon. Unpublished research report, Psychology Department, McGill
University, Montreal.
Yip, V., & Matthews, S. (2000). Syntactic transfer in a Cantonese-English
bilingual child. In F. Genesee (Guest Ed.), Bilingualism, Language and
Cognition: Aspects of Bilingual Acquisition, 3, 193–208.