Bilingualism in childhood

From the research of experts who have been dealing with bilingualism in childhood for years, comes an in-depth discussion of the cognitive, linguistic and neuropsychological aspects of bilingual competence.

The book analyzes the following aspects of bilingualism in childhood: phonetic-phonological acquisition, development of the first phases of the lexicon, morphosyntax, narrative competence, reading and comprehension of the text, as well as the metalinguistic dimension, which is the most advanced stage of language development.

Some assessment tools are also proposed and the theme of bimodal bilingualism is also presented, that is the language skills of deaf children, who can be considered bilingual having acquired vocal language and sign language. At the end of the volume, Primary Language Disorder (PLD) is carefully analyzed in bilingual conditions, where it has been shown that exposure to a bilingual context strengthens some non-linguistic abilities in these children, which could be used as points of reference in rehabilitation.