"The average bilingual speaker, it is true, has two strings on his bow — one rather slacker than the other… Every cultured man needs a second and perhaps a third foreign language — but he need not be bilingual. The unilingual has the advantage, and the bigger the cultural community in that language the bigger the advantage. As first principle, pin your faith to the mother tongue."

(Firth, 1930)

"It is, of course, an advantage for the child to be familiar with two languages: but without doubt the advantage may be, and generally is, purchased too dear. First of all the child in question hardly learns either of the two languages as perfectly as he would have done if he had limited himself to one… Secondly, the brain effort required to master the two languages instead of one certainly diminishes the child’s power of learning other things."

(Jespersen, 1922)

"This might be considered evidence that the use of a foreign language in the home is one of the chief factors in producing mental retardation as measured by intelligence tests. A more probable explanation is that those nationality groups whose average intellectual ability is inferior do not readily learn a new language."

(Goodenough, 1926)

Average IQ — Children Population

Monolingual English 99 96

Bilingual Welsh/English 100 86

From Saer (1924)

Urban children managed to resolve their emotional conflict between the use of Welsh and English at an earlier age than rural children.

(Saer, 1924)

"The bilingual is NOT the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather he or she has a unique and specific linguistic configuration. The co-existence and constant interaction of two languages in the bilingual has produced a different but complete language system.

… The bilingual is a fully competent speaker-hearer; he or she has developed competencies to the extent required by his or her needs and those of the environment… Because the needs and uses of the two languages are quite different, the bilingual is rarely equally or completely fluent in the two languages."

(from Grosjean, 1992)

(a) Could you call a cow ‘dog’ and a dog ‘cow’?

(b) Suppose you were making up names for things.

Could you call a cow ‘dog’ and a dog ‘cow’?

Response 4-6 years 7-9 years

E A E-A E A E-A

No-No 8 38 23 31 71 23

No-Yes 8 8 38 38 59

Yes-Yes 8 8

Yes-No

Inconsistent 76 54 31 31 29 18

(Ianco-Worall, 1972)

In Italian color adjectives are post-nominal

Pietro: "il rosso tavolo" [the red table]

"la gialla palla" [the yellow ball]

"il nero cane" [the black dog]

Speaker Language Correct Response

% Time (sec.)

English 93 4.6

Japanese 92 7.6

Speaker Language Correct Response

% Time (sec.)

English 91 4.2

Japanese 76 7.1

(from Cook, 1990)

Type 1. One parent, one language

Type 2. Non-dominant home language/

One language, one environment

Type 3. Non-dominant home language/

No community support

Type 4. Double non-dominant home language/

No community support

Type 5. Non-native parents

Type 6. Mixed languages

(from Romaine, 1989)

Contrast Catalan Spanish Examples

/e/-/ / ˆ* sectarian

/ /-/ / ˆ sombrero

/ /-/ / ˆ ship pleasure

/s/-/z/ ˆ ˆ sit these

* ˆ = present

Non-words: gesi — gezi

(from Sebastian-Galles & Soto-Faraco, 1999)

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