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Dual language exposure and early bilingual 
development
ERIKA HOFF, CYNTHIA CORE, SILVIA PLACE, ROSARIO RUMICHE, MELISSA 
SEÑOR and MARISOL PARRA

Journal of Child Language / Volume 39 / Issue 01 / January 2012, pp 1 ­ 27
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000910000759, Published online: 22 March 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0305000910000759

How to cite this article:
ERIKA HOFF, CYNTHIA CORE, SILVIA PLACE, ROSARIO RUMICHE, MELISSA 
SEÑOR and MARISOL PARRA (2012). Dual language exposure and early bilingual 
development. Journal of Child Language, 39, pp 1­27 doi:10.1017/
S0305000910000759

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J. Child Lang. 39 (2012), 1–27. f Cambridge University Press 2011
doi:10.1017/S0305000910000759

Dual language exposure and early

bilingual development*
E R I K A H O F F, C Y N T H I A C O R E, S I L V I A P L A C E,
R O S A R I O R U M I C H E, M E L I S S A S E Ñ O R
AND MARISOL PARRA

Florida Atlantic University

(Received 13 January 2010 – Revised 21 July 2010 – Accepted 18 November 2010 –

First published online 22 March 2011)

ABSTRACT

The extant literature includes conflicting assertions regarding the

influence of bilingualism on the rate of language development. The
present study compared the language development of equivalently
high-SES samples of bilingually and monolingually developing
children from 1; 10 to 2 ; 6. The monolingually developing children
were significantly more advanced than the bilingually developing
children on measures of both vocabulary and grammar in single
language comparisons, but they were comparable on a measure of total
vocabulary. Within the bilingually developing sample, all measures of
vocabulary and grammar were related to the relative amount of input in
that language. Implications for theories of language acquisition and for
understanding bilingual development are discussed.

The number of children being raised in bilingual homes is large and

growing, yet the course of language development in children from bilingual
homes is not well described or understood (McCardle & Hoff, 2006). On
the one hand, it is clear that children exposed to two languages can learn
them. A large body of research has refuted the once-held view that dual
language input confuses children (see Hakuta, 1986, for history). To the
contrary, children exposed to two languages can distinguish those languages
from infancy, and they can learn two phonological systems, two vocabul-
aries and two grammars (Kovács & Mehler, 2009a; Petitto, Katerelos,

[*] Erika Hoff, Silvia Place, Rosario Rumiche, Melissa Señor and Marisol Parra,
Department of Psychology. Cynthia Core, formerly in the Department of
Communication Sciences and Disorders, is now in the Department of Speech and
Hearing Science, The George Washington University. This research was supported by
grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(HD054427 to Erika Hoff and HD054427-S1 to Melissa Señor). Address for
correspondence : Erika Hoff, Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University,
Davie, FL 33314. e-mail : ehoff@fau.edu
1
 H O F F E T A L.

Levy, Gauna, Tetrealt & Ferraroi, 2001 ; Petitto & Kovelman, 2003 ;
Werker & Byers-Heinlein, 2008). On the other hand, it is not clear whether
children exposed to two languages typically acquire them at the same rate
as monolingual children learn one. The extant literature is inadequate to
address the question of what is normative in bilingual development
(Genesee, 2006 ; Marchman, Fernald & Hurtado, 2010).
Evidence of what is normative would address the still open and debated
question of the degree to which language acquisition is paced by biology
versus experience (Lidz, 2007 ; Tomasello, 2006). On the logic that children
exposed to two languages must hear less of each than children exposed
to one, the apparent rapidity and ease with which children acquire two
languages has been cited in recent publications as evidence for the innate-
ness of language – particularly grammar – and the independence of language
acquisition from effects of variation in input (Gleitman & Newport, 1995 ;
Petitto & Kovelman, 2003). The remarkable skill of children at acquiring
multiple languages could, however, obscure the extent to which language
acquisition results from a process of learning from information provided in
language experience. If despite their prodigious abilities, children typically
require more time to acquire two languages than one, this would suggest a
more input-based account of language acquisition (Gathercole & Hoff,
2007 ; Oller & Eilers, 2002).
Evidence regarding the normative rate of bilingual development
would also inform educators and policy makers who seek to serve the many
children from bilingual homes entering the school system each year.
Statistically, bilingualism is a risk factor for poor academic outcomes in the
US (Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; Federal Interagency Forum on Child
and Family Statistics, 2002). This is surprising in the context of other
evidence that bilingualism is associated with cognitive advantages from
infancy through old age (Bialystok, 2005; 2007 ; Kovács & Mehler, 2009b)
and that adolescents who are proficient in their family’s heritage languages
enjoy psychosocial and academic benefits as a result (Tseng & Fuligni,
2000 ; Wong Fillmore, 1996). It could be that the statistical risk associated
with bilingualism actually reflects effects of other correlated variables ;
socioeconomic status is a likely contender. Or, it could be that children
learning two languages have a constellation of skills at school entry that
differs from the skills of monolingual children and that is not well met by
the educational system. To begin to understand the sources of difficulty
that place children from bilingual homes at risk and in order to design
appropriate curricula for such children, it is necessary to identify the effects
of early dual language exposure – apart from the other factors that are
typically confounded with bilingualism at the societal level.
The extant literature does not provide a normative description of early
bilingual development because the number of studies that directly compare
2
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

the first stages of bilingual to monolingual development is still few, and the
number of bilingual children in these studies is often small. The first studies
of bilingual development were not designed to provide normative data
but to ask theory-based questions about the human capacity to learn two
languages. These studies reported that bilingual children are comparable to
monolingual children in the age at which they achieve basic milestones of
language development, including production of first word, production of
first two-word combination, achievement of a 50-word vocabulary (Petitto
et al., 2001 ; Petitto & Kovelman, 2003), and in grammatical properties of
their utterances, including use of finite verb forms, negation and pronominal
subjects (Paradis & Genesee, 1996). Even the vocabulary development
in each language of bilingual children has been reported to be within
the normal range of variation for monolingual children (Pearson, Fernández
& Oller, 1993). While such findings make it clear that bilingualism is
well within the capacity of the human language faculty, they have been
cited in support of stronger claims – for example, in the scientific
literature, that ‘‘ the speed of acquisition is comparable in monolinguals
and bilinguals ’’ (Kovács & Mehler, 2009a : 611) and, in expert advice
to parents, pediatricians and educators, that ‘‘ no empirical evidence links
bilingualism to language delay of any sort ’’ (King & Fogle, 2006).
These recent assertions are based on the early literature in which sample
sizes were either so small that no statistical comparisons were made
(Pearson et al., 1993 ; Petitto & Kovelman, 2003) or sufficiently small (ns=7
and 13) that the power to detect differences was quite low (Pearson et al.,
1993). These early studies typically made claims only about the achieve-
ment of major milestones within the normal range of variability, but that
is not always noted when their null findings with respect to effects of
bilingualism are cited. Furthermore, the conclusion that there is no effect
of bilingualism on vocabulary development conflicts with the outcome of
a reanalysis of the original data in Pearson and Fernández (1994)
(Bialystok, 2001 ; Bialystok & Feng, 2011) and with the results of more
recent, larger-sample studies which have found that bilingual children have
smaller English vocabularies than same-aged monolingual children
(Bialystok & Feng, 2011 ; Bialystok, Luk, Peets & Yang, 2010 ; Marchman
et al., 2010 ; Vagh, Pan & Mancilla-Martinez, 2009 ; Thordardottir,
Rothenberg, Rivard & Naves, 2006). Although there is not recent,
large-sample work comparing bilingual to monolingual grammatical
development, three studies have found that vocabulary and grammatical
development in young bilingual children are correlated within languages
though not across languages (Conboy & Thal, 2006 ; Marchman, Martı́nez-
Sussmann & Dale, 2004 ; Parra, Hoff & Core, 2011). Thus, it is likely that
grammatical development is slower in early bilingual development as well.
There is direct evidence of differences between school-aged monolingual
3
 H O F F E T A L.

and bilingual children on measures of grammatical development, and there

is evidence that the degree of difference between monolinguals and
bilinguals on these grammatical measures is related to the amount of
English exposure the children have (Gathercole, 2002a; 2002b ; 2002c ;
Gathercole & Thomas, 2009 ; Pearson, Fernández, Lewedeg & Oller, 1997 ;
Oller & Eilers, 2002).
It is important to point out that there is no serious current claim that
bilingual children are confused or slowed in their ability to learn language.
In studies that have used measures of bilingual children’s combined
vocabularies, the bilingually developing children look very similar to the
monolingually developing children (Patterson, 2004 ; Patterson & Pearson,
2004 ; Pearson & Fernández, 1994). There are, however, conflicting reports
as to whether bilingual children proceed at the same pace as monolingual
children in acquiring the vocabulary and, particularly, the grammar of EACH
of their languages. Some studies report that bilingual children achieve basic
milestones at the same age as monolingual children, and other studies report
that bilingual children score below norms for their age when assessed in
only one of their languages.
There is substantial evidence from the study of monolingually developing
children that the amount of speech children hear is related to their rate of
language development, supporting the view that language development is
paced by children’s access to input (Hoff, 2006). The range of variability in
how much speech young children hear is enormous (Hoff, 2006 ; Hart &
Risley, 1995), and some children exposed to two languages may well hear
as much speech in each language as some monolingual children hear in
only one (De Houwer, 2009). On average, however, children whose daily
language exposure is divided between two languages are likely to hear less of
each language than children whose daily language exposure is in only a
single language – unless bilingualism in the home doubles the amount of talk
addressed to young children. This assumption that bilingually developing
children’s single-language input is reduced compared to monolingual
children and the theoretical position that language development is paced by
input yield two predictions tested in the present study : (1) that the average
rate of language development in children learning only one language will
be more rapid than the rate of language development in children who are
simultaneously learning two languages ; and (2) that in children exposed to
two languages, the rate of development of each language will vary as a
function of the children’s relative amount of exposure.
To test these predictions, the present study compared 47 Spanish–
English bilingually developing children to 56 English-learning monolingual
children in terms of their vocabulary and grammatical development at the
ages of 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6. The socioeconomic status of both samples was
high and equivalent, allowing an unconfounded test of the effect of dual
4
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

language exposure in supportive language learning environments. Two

types of analyses investigated the relation of the relative amount of exposure
to English and Spanish on the bilingual children’s development of each
language : In one, children were categorized according to whether their
input was English-dominant, balanced or Spanish-dominant and between-
group comparisons of their English and Spanish development were made.
In another, dominance in input was treated as a continuous variable, and its
relation to measures of vocabulary and grammatical development in each
language was assessed.

METHOD

Participants
The participants were 25 male and 22 female children exposed to both
Spanish and English from birth and 30 male and 26 female children
exposed only to English. All families resided in South Florida, in the US.
All children were full term and healthy at birth, with normal hearing. All
children were screened for evidence of communicative delay at 1;10
(Squires, Potter & Bricker, 1999). Participants were recruited through
advertisements in local magazines, at programs for parents with young
children and through word of mouth. Because the goal was to investigate
the effects of dual language exposure across the full range of naturally
occurring bilingual environments, the criterion for bilingual exposure was
inclusive : children were required to hear at least 10 percent of their total
input in the less-frequently-heard language, according to caregiver report.
The sample included children who represented the full range of possible
proportions of English and Spanish. Based on caregiver estimates of their
children’s home language exposure at study entry, 15 of the bilingually
exposed children heard more Spanish than English, 18 children heard more
English than Spanish and 14 children heard equal portions of Spanish
and English. The average proportion of English in input for the sample of
bilingually exposed children was 51 percent. All the bilingually exposed
children were producing some words in both languages at 1 ;10.
All the children were born in the US. Thirteen of the 47 bilingually
developing children came from households in which both parents described
themselves as native Spanish speakers, 25 came from households in which
one parent was a native Spanish speaker and one was a native speaker of
English and 9 came from other household configurations including those in
which one or both parents described themselves as native bilinguals. Of the
61 parents (mothers and fathers) who described themselves as native
Spanish speakers, 54 were immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries in
Latin America and the Caribbean, and 7 were born in the US. All but
1 mother and 2 fathers of the monolingual children were native English
5
 H O F F E T A L.

speakers. Among parents in bilingual households, 87% of mothers and 60 %

of fathers had at least a college (4-year) degree; among parents in
monolingual households, 75 % of mothers and 61% of fathers had at least a
college (4-year) degree. There was no difference between the bilingual
and monolingual households in the distribution of mothers or fathers across
five levels of educational achievement – less than high school, high school,
2-year degree, 4-year degree and advanced degree. The bilingually
developing children included 28 first-born and only children and 19
later-born children. The monolingual children included 37 first-born
and only children and 19 later-born children. All but 3 of the bilingually
developing children and 5 of the monolingual children lived with both
parents.

Procedure
Measures of the children’s language development were collected at 1;10, 2 ;1
and 2; 6 using the English MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development
Inventory : Words and Sentences (CDI) (Fenson et al., 1993) and its Spanish
counterpart, El Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas
(IDHC) (Jackson-Maldonado, Thal, Fenson, Marchman, Newton &
Conboy, 2003). (The mean ages in months at each measurement point
for monolingual children were 22.75 [SD=0.32], 25.79 [SD=0.30] and 30.99
[SD=0.38]; for bilingually developing children they were 22.75 [SD=0.32],
25.80 [SD=0.33] and 31.00 [SD=0.34].) The MacArthur-Bates inventories
are caregiver-report instruments with established reliability and validity
for monolingual and bilingual populations (Fenson et al., 1993; Jackson-
Maldonado et al., 2003, Marchman & Martı́nez-Sussmann, 2002). Each
yields a raw vocabulary score based on words the child has been heard to
produce and three measures of grammatical development : (1) a dichotomous
measure of whether or not the child has produced word combinations ; (2) a
grammatical complexity score based on 37 items in which a pair of utterances
is presented, one grammatically more advanced than the other, and the
caregiver indicates which sounds more like the child’s speech ; and (3) the
mean length of the longest three utterances the child has produced (MLU3).
The bilingually developing children’s total vocabularies (their raw
English+raw Spanish vocabulary scores) were also calculated to index their
total language knowledge (Patterson & Pearson, 2004).
Estimates of the English proportion of home language use were obtained
as part of an extensive interview with all caregivers when the children were
1 ; 10 and 2; 6 and with a subsample of 29 participants at 2;1. The mean
proportion of English in home language input was 51.17 (SD=28.78), 58.93
(SD=29.92) and 54.68 (SD=31.30) at the three measurement points
respectively. At all points the range of English use in the home was from
6
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

700 Monolinguals, English

Bilinguals, English
600
Bilinguals, Spanish

Raw Vocabulary Score 500

400

300

200

100

0
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 1. English vocabulary scores for monolingually developing children and English and
Spanish vocabulary scores for bilingually developing children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6. Error
bars represent standard errors of the means.

0–100 %, but all children heard at least 10 % of their total language exposure
in a second language – although not necessarily in the home. The validity
of caregiver estimates was established in the subsample whose language
environments were studied at 2; 1. Caregivers kept diaries of the children’s
language exposure, recording which language was addressed to the child for
every 30-minute period the child was awake over the course of seven days
(Place & Hoff, in press). The correlations between caregiver estimates of
the English proportion of children’s home language experience and the
diary measure of English-only experience was r (n=29)=0.71 and with
Spanish-only experience was r (n=29)=x0.84.

RESULTS

Comparisons of monolingually and bilingually developing children

Single-language vocabulary. Mean raw vocabulary scores in English for
both groups and in Spanish for the bilingually developing children are
plotted in Figure 1. The English vocabulary scores of the monolingually
and bilingually developing children were compared in a 3 (age)r2
(language group) mixed ANOVA. There was a significant effect of age
(F(2, 202)=438.47, p<0.001, g2p=0.81); a significant effect of language
group (F(1, 101)=21.34, p<0.001, g2p=0.17); and a significant ager
language group interaction (F(2, 202)=8.41, p<0.001, g2p=0.08). On
7
 H O F F E T A L.

700
Monolinguals, English
Bilinguals, Total Vocabulary
600

Total Vocabulary Score

500

400

300

200

100

0
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 2. English vocabulary scores for monolingually developing children and total
vocabulary scores (English+Spanish) for bilingually developing children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and
2; 6. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

average, the children’s English vocabulary scores increased with age; the
monolingually developing children’s vocabulary scores were significantly
larger than the bilingually developing children’s, and their English
vocabulary gains over time were larger.
A separate 3 (age)r2 (language) repeated measures ANOVA compared
the English and Spanish vocabularies of the bilingually developing children.
On average, the bilingually developing children’s vocabulary scores
increased with age (F(2, 92)=125.72, p<0.001, g2p=0.73); their English
vocabularies were larger than their Spanish vocabularies (F(1, 46)=13.82,
p=0.001, g2p=0.23) ; and their English vocabularies increased more over time
than did their Spanish vocabularies (F(2, 92)=34.27, p<0.001, g2p=0.43).
Total vocabulary. The monolingually developing children’s English
vocabulary scores are plotted with the bilingually developing children’s
total (Spanish+English) vocabulary scores in Figure 2. The groups were
compared on these measures in a 3 (age)r2 (language group) ANOVA. The
only significant effect was of age (F(2, 202)=373.18, p<0.001, g2p=0.79).
There was no difference between the monolingually and bilingually
developing children in total vocabulary size or total vocabulary gains from
1 ; 10 to 2; 6 (ps=0.54 and 0.39, respectively).
The onset of combinatorial speech. The percent of monolingual and
bilingually developing children producing word combinations in English
are presented in Figure 3; the percent of bilingually developing children
producing word combinations in Spanish is also presented. Chi-square
8
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

100

Percent Children Combining 80

60
Monolinguals, Engilsh
Bilinguals, Engilsh
Bilinguals, Spanish
40
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 3. The percent of monolingual and bilingually developing children combining words in
English, and percent of bilingually developing children combining words in Spanish at 1; 10,
2; 1 and 2; 6.

tests assessed the association between language group and the achievement
of the milestone of producing word combinations in English at each
measurement point. The association was significant at 1;10; more of the
monolingual children than bilingual children were combining words in
English (x2[1]=8.28, p=0.004). At 2; 1 and 2; 6, there was no significant
association – essentially all the children in both groups were combining
words.
Figure 4 presents the same data for the monolingual children, along with
the percent of bilingual children who were combining words in either
language. Using this across-language measure of the achievement of
combinatorial speech, Chi-square tests of the association between language
status and the production of word combinations revealed no association at
any age.
Grammatical complexity and utterance length. Mean grammatical
complexity scores and mean MLU of the longest three utterances produced
are plotted in Figures 5a and 5b. The measures of grammatical development
for the bilingually developing children’s Spanish are plotted for descriptive
purposes only ; no statistical comparisons of English to Spanish develop-
ment were made because the instruments were not calibrated to create
directly comparable scores in both languages.1 Statistical comparison of the

[1] Although the grammatical complexity scores on both the English and Spanish inven-
tories range from 0 to 37, there is no basis for assuming that the same number on each
scale indicates the same level of grammatical development in each language. Both scales
9
 H O F F E T A L.

100

Percent Combining in Any Language

80

60

Monolinguals
Bilinguals
40
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 4. The percent of monolingual and bilingually developing children combining words in
any language (English for monolinguals, English or Spanish or both for bilinguals) at 1; 10,
2; 1 and 2; 6.

(a) (b)
30 Monolinguals, English Grammar 8 Monolinguals, English MLU
Grammatical Complexity Score

Bilinguals, English Grammar Bilinguals, English MLU

MLU of Longest Utterances

Bilinguals, Spanish Grammar 7 Bilinguals, Spanish MLU

25
6
20
5
15 4
3
10
2
5
1
0 0
1;10 2;1 2;6 1;10 2;1 2;6
Age Age
Fig. 5. Measures of grammatical development in English for monolingually developing
children and bilingually developing children and in Spanish for bilingually developing
children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6 : (a) grammatical complexity scores, and (b) mean length of the
three longest utterances. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

do provide norms for converting raw scores into percentile scores, but these are also not
comparable across languages because each instrument was normed against a different
monolingual sample, with different demographic characteristics.
10
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

monolingual and bilingual children was made for all measures of English
grammatical development. Grammatical complexity scores were compared
in a 3 (age)r2 (language group) mixed ANOVA. There was a significant
main effect of age (F(2, 202)=204.96, p<0.001, g2p=0.67) ; a significant
main effect of language group (F(1, 101)=10.74, p=0.004, g2p=0.10); and a
significant agerlanguage group interaction (F(2, 202)=13.27, p<0.001,
g2p=0.12). On average, the grammatical complexity of the children’s
English productions increased with age. On average, across ages, the
monolingually developing children were more advanced in English than
the bilingually developing children, and they made larger gains in the
grammatical complexity of their English productions over time than did the
bilingually developing children. A separate ANOVA revealed a parallel
pattern of effects with MLU3 as the measure of grammatical development :
MLU3 increased with age (F(2, 202)=260.60, p<0.001, g2p=0.72) ; was
higher for the monolingually developing than for the bilingually developing
children (F(1, 101)=14.54, p<0.001, g2p=0.13) ; and showed larger
increases with age in the monolingually developing children than in the
bilingually developing children (F(2, 202)=4.60, p=0.011, g2p=0.04).
The size of the effect of bilingualism on single language development. The
previous analyses revealed no difference between the monolingual and
the bilingually developing children when the bilingual children’s
accomplishments in both languages were considered, but they also revealed
a consistent pattern of statistically significant differences when monolingual
and bilingual children were compared on their single-language accom-
plishments. To provide additional indicators of the size of the effect of
bilingualism, we report the children’s percentile scores on the measures of
vocabulary size, grammatical complexity and MLU3 in English for the
monolinguals and in English and Spanish for the bilingually developing
children in Table 1. The percentile scores for English were assigned with
reference to the monolingual English norms for the CDI, and the percentile
scores for Spanish were assigned with reference to the monolingual Spanish
norms for the IDHC. Transforming raw scores into percentile introduces
additional error because each percentile score encompasses a range of
raw scores and because percentile scores are particularly insensitive to
individual differences in the tails of any distribution. However, we present
them because they provide an accessible gauge of the size of the difference
between groups and because percentile scores are often used for educational
and clinical purposes. What these percentile scores indicate is that the
monolingual children were performing as would be expected based on the
norms. The mean percentiles on all measures at all measurement points
were between the 40th and the 62nd percentile. The bilingual children’s
mean percentiles, when their performance in each language was compared
to monolingual norms, ranged from the 20th to the 28th percentile on
11
 H O F F E T A L.

TABLE 1. Mean percentile scores (and standard deviations) for measures of

vocabulary, grammatical complexity, and MLU of children’s longest three
utterances (MLU3) for monolingual and bilingually developing children at
1 ; 10, 2;2 and 2;6

Group, language

Monolinguals, Bilinguals, Bilinguals,

Language measure English English Spanish

Age 1; 10
Vocabulary 41.48 (25.73) 23.83 (24.80) 21.87 (24.26)
Grammatical complexity 62.05 (18.80) 52.98 (16.83) 63.83 (6.44)
MLU3 43.86 (20.51) 26.04 (26.57) 48.19 (20.55)
Age 2; 1
Vocabulary 49.11 (28.09) 28.26 (24.98) 20.72 (20.59)
Grammatical complexity 55.52 (21.19) 40.64 (23.67) 46.70 (13.16)
MLU3 47.23 (22.82) 31.02 (24.93) 44.26 (20.40)
Age 2; 6
Vocabulary 55.47 (28.70) 20.83 (20.95) 20.13 (26.64)
Grammatical complexity 40.43 (21.16) 29.87 (29.72) 37.48 (26.77)
MLU3 44.00 (22.10) 23.74 (21.65) 27.83 (22.80)

TABLE 2. Estimates of the size of the effect of dual language exposure on

English language development from the comparison of monolingual to bilingual
children from 1;10 to 2;6

Measure of effect size

Difference in
Language measure g2p Cohen’s d percentiles

Raw vocabulary score 0.17 0.90 21.1

Grammatical complexity score 0.10 0.65 10.7
Mean length of three longest utterances 0.22 0.75 16.9

vocabulary and from the 23rd to the 63rd percentiles on the measures of
grammatical development.
Table 2 presents three effect size estimates : partial eta squared, which was
also reported with each analysis of variance, Cohen’s d, and the difference
between the average percentile scores for the monolingually and bilingually
developing children. These were calculated on the data averaged across all
three observations points and thus are estimates of the size of the effect of
dual language exposure on English language development during the period
from 1 ; 10 to 2; 6. Using Cohen’s guidelines for interpreting d, the effect
of dual language input on vocabulary size was large, and the effect on
grammatical complexity and MLU3 was medium to large (Cohen, 1988).
12
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

700 Monolinguals
Bilinguals, English-dominant
600 Bilinguals, Balanced
Raw English Vocabulary Score Bilinguals, Spanish-dominant
500

400

300

200

100

0
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 6. Mean English vocabulary scores for monolingual and for three groups of bilingually
developing children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

Comparison of bilingually developing children with Spanish-dominant,

balanced and English-dominant language exposure
To ask how differences between bilingually developing children and
monolingually developing children are affected by the degree to which one
language is dominant in the bilingually developing children’s experience,
the bilingually developing children were divided into three groups based
on the balance of dual language exposure in the home at 1;10. (In this
sample, the measure of home language exposure was relatively stable from
1; 10 to 2 ; 6. The correlation between the estimates that were collected for all
participants at the first and last measurement points was r (n=47)=0.74.)
The Spanish-dominant exposure group included 15 children for whom the
percent English addressed to them at home was 30% or less (Mean English
exposure=15%, SD=9.82). The balanced exposure group included 14
children for whom the percent English addressed to them at home was
between 50 % and 60 % (Mean English exposure=52.86%, SD=4.69).
(There were no children whose caregivers reported 40 % English input.)
The English-dominant exposure group included 18 children for whom
English was 70% or more of their home input (Mean English exposure=
80%, SD=10.43).
Vocabulary. Figure 6 reproduces the plot of mean English vocabulary
scores for the monolinguals, which was also presented in Figure 1, and
presents the mean English vocabulary scores for the three groups of
bilingually developing children. All four groups were compared in a 3
13
 H O F F E T A L.

700 English-dominant
Balanced
600

Raw Spanish Vocabulary Score

Spanish-dominant

500

400

300

200

100

0
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 7. Mean Spanish vocabulary scores for three groups of bilingually developing children
at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

(age)r4 (language group) mixed ANOVA. There was a significant main

effect of age (F(2, 198)=305.27, p<0.001, g2p=0.76) ; a significant main ef-
fect of language exposure group (F(3, 99)=116.96, p<0.001, g2p=0.34); and
a significant agerlanguage exposure group interaction (F(6, 198)=6.44,
p<0.001, g2p=0.16). On average, the children’s English vocabulary scores
increased with age. Descriptively, the monolingual children had the highest
English vocabulary scores, the English exposure-dominant bilinguals
had the next-highest English vocabulary scores, and they were followed
by the balanced exposure bilinguals and the Spanish exposure-dominant
bilinguals, in that order. Bonferroni paired comparisons within the language
group effect (that is, averaged across age) revealed that the Spanish
exposure-dominant children differed from all other groups, the balanced
exposure bilingual children differed from the monolingual children, and the
English exposure-dominant children did not differ from the monolingual
children (all significant p-values f0.01, one-tailed).
Mean Spanish vocabulary scores for the three groups of bilingually
developing children are presented in Figure 7. The effects of age and ex-
posure group among the bilingually developing children were assessed in a
3 (age)r3 (exposure group) mixed ANOVA. There was a significant main
effect of age (F(2, 88)=38.51, p<0.001, g2p=0.47); a significant main effect
of exposure group (F(2, 44)=10.17, p<0.001, g2p=0.32) ; and a significant
agerexposure group interaction (F(4, 88)=4.64, p=0.002, g2p=0.17). On
average the children’s Spanish vocabularies grew from 1;10 to 2 ;6.
14
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

100

Percent Children Combining in English

80

60
Monolinguals
Bilinguals, English-dominant
Bilinguals, Balanced
Bilinguals, Spanish-dominant
40
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 8. The percent of children producing word combinations in English for monolingually
developing children and three groups of bilingually developing children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and
2;6.

Descriptively, the Spanish exposure-dominant children had the largest

Spanish vocabularies, the balanced exposure bilingual children had the next
largest, and the English exposure-dominant children had the lowest Spanish
vocabulary scores. Bonferroni paired comparisons of language groups
revealed that the Spanish exposure-dominant children differed from both
other groups (p<0.01), who were not different from each other.
The onset of combinatorial speech. The percent of children producing
word combinations in English at each age are plotted for the three groups of
bilingually developing children and the monolingual children in Figure 8.
Chi-square tests revealed a significant association between language group
and the achievement of combinatorial speech in English at 1; 10 (x2[3]=
13.35, p=0.004) and 2 ; 1 (x2[3]=11.97, p=0.008), with the monolingual
group showing the highest frequency of combinatorial speech and the
Spanish exposure-dominant group showing the lowest. At 2;6, the associ-
ation was not significant – all children in all groups were combining words
in English with exception of one bilingual child in the Spanish-dominant
exposure group. Within the bilingually developing children, the association
between language exposure group and the achievement of combinatorial
speech in English did not reach statistical significance at any age. Figure 9
presents the percent of bilingually developing children in each group
producing word combinations in Spanish. Chi-square analyses revealed a
significant association between exposure group and the achievement of
15
 H O F F E T A L.

100

Percent Children Combining in Spanish 80

60

English-dominant
Balanced
Spanish-dominant
40
1;10 2;1 2;6
Age
Fig. 9. The percent of Spanish-dominant, balanced and English-dominant bilingually
developing children producing word combinations in Spanish at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6.

combinatorial speech at the age of 2 ; 6 only (x2[2]=11.08, p=0.004). At 2;6,

100 % of the Spanish exposure-dominant and balanced exposure bilingual
groups were producing word combinations in Spanish ; 67% of the English-
dominant exposure group were producing word combinations in Spanish.
Grammatical complexity and utterance length. Mean English grammatical
complexity scores and mean English MLU3 are plotted for the three
groups of bilingually developing children and the monolingual children in
Figures 10a and 10b. Grammatical complexity scores were compared in a 3
(age)r4 (language exposure group) mixed ANOVA. There was a significant
main effect of age (F(2, 198)=123.29, p<0.001, g2p=0.56); a significant
main effect of language exposure group (F(3, 99)=11.29, p<0.001,
g2p=0.25); and a significant agerlanguage exposure group interaction
(F(6, 198)=8.56, p<0.001, g2p=0.21). Descriptively, the monolingual
children and the English exposure-dominant bilingual children had the
highest scores, followed by the balanced exposure bilinguals and the
Spanish exposure-dominant bilinguals in that order. Bonferroni paired
comparisons of language groups revealed that Spanish exposure-dominant
children differed from both other groups (p<0.05, one-tailed), who were
not different from each other.
A parallel ANOVA procedure was applied to English MLU3, with
similar findings. There was a significant main effect of age (F(2, 198)=
166.97, p<0.001, g2p=0.63) ; a significant main effect of language exposure
group (F(3, 99)=11.85, p<0.001, g2p=0.26); and a significant ager
language exposure group interaction (F(6, 198)=2.34, p=0.03, g2p=0.07).
16
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

(a) (b)
30 Monolinguals 8 Monolinguals
English Grammatical Complexity Score

Bilinguals, English-dominant Bilinguals, English-dominant

English MLU of Longest Utterances

Bilinguals, Balanced 7 Bilinguals, Balanced
25 Bilinguals, Spanish-dominant
Bilinguals, Spanish-dominant
6
20
5

15 4

3
10
2
5
1
0 0
1;10 2;1 2;6 2;10 2;1 2;6
Age Age
Fig. 10. Measures of grammatical development in English for monolingually developing
children and three groups of bilingually developing children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6 : (a)
grammatical complexity scores, and (b) mean length of the three longest utterances. Error
bars represent standard errors of the means.

Descriptively, the monolingual children and the English exposure-

dominant bilingual children produced the longest utterances, followed
by the balanced exposure bilinguals and the Spanish exposure-dominant
bilinguals in that order. Bonferroni paired comparisons of language groups
revealed that the Spanish exposure-dominant children differed from all
other groups and that the balanced exposure bilingual children differed
from the monolingual children (ps <0.05, one-tailed).
Mean Spanish grammatical complexity scores and mean Spanish MLU3
are plotted for the three groups of bilingually developing children
in Figures 11a and 11b. The effects of age and language exposure balance
on the grammatical complexity of children’s Spanish utterances among
the bilingually developing children were assessed in a 3 (age)r3 (exposure
balance) mixed ANOVA. There was a significant main effect of
age (F(2, 88)=17.49, p<0.001, g2p=0.28); a significant main effect of
exposure balance (F(2, 44)=8.17, p<0.001, g2p=0.27); and a significant
agerexposure balance interaction (F(4, 88)=6.63, p<0.001, g2p=0.23). On
average the grammatical complexity of the children’s Spanish grew from
1; 10 to 2; 6. Descriptively, the Spanish exposure-dominant children
produced the most complex utterances and the complexity of their
utterances grew most over the time period of the study, followed by the
balanced exposure bilingual children and the English exposure-dominant
bilinguals in that order. Bonferroni paired comparisons of language groups
17
 H O F F E T A L.

(a)
Spanish Grammatical Complexity Score (b)
30 8

Spanish MLU of Longest Utterances

English-dominant English-dominant
Balanced 7 Balanced
25 Spanish-dominant Spanish-dominant
6
20
5
15 4
3
10
2
5
1
0 0
1;10 2;1 2;6 2;10 2;1 2;6
Age Age
Fig. 11. Measures of grammatical development in Spanish for three groups of bilingually
developing children at 1; 10, 2; 1 and 2; 6 : (a) grammatical complexity scores, and (b) mean
length of the three longest utterances. Error bars represent standard errors of the means.

revealed that the Spanish exposure-dominant children differed from both

other groups (p<.01), who were not different from each other.
A parallel ANOVA procedure tested the effects of age and language
dominance among the bilingual children on the mean length of their longest
three utterances in Spanish. There was a significant main effect of age
(F(2, 88)=26.47, p<0.001, g2p=0.38) ; a significant main effect of exposure
balance (F(2, 44)=18.61, p<0.001, g2p=0.46) ; and a significant ager
exposure balance interaction (F(4, 88)=2.87, p=0.03, g2p=0.12). On
average the length of the children’s Spanish utterances grew from 1 ;10 to
2 ; 6. Descriptively, the Spanish exposure-dominant children produced the
longest utterances and the length of their utterances grew most over the time
period of the study, followed by the balanced exposure bilingual children
and the English exposure-dominant bilinguals in that order. Bonferroni
paired comparisons of exposure groups revealed that the Spanish exposure-
dominant children differed from both other groups (p<.01), who were not
different from each other.

Correlations between relative exposure and development in two languages

The effects of the balance of English and Spanish in children’s language
exposure on their English and Spanish development were also assessed
treating dominance in language exposure as a continuous, rather than
categorical variable. Correlations between the children’s relative amount of
in-home exposure to English and measures of their English and Spanish
language development are presented in Table 3. The percent of home
18
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

TABLE 3. Correlations between English proportion of home language use and

measures of bilingually developing children’s English and Spanish development
at 1;10, 2;1 and 2;6

English Spanish

Grammatical Grammatical
Age Vocabulary complexity MLU3 Vocabulary complexity MLU3

1; 10 0.52** 0.39** 0.55** x0.50** x0.12 x0.54**

2;1a 0.71** 0.59** 0.64** x0.69** x0.51** x0.65**
2;6 0.58** 0.57** 0.46** x0.67** x0.53** x0.65**
a
The measure of home language use was obtained for only 28 of the participants at the 2; 1
language assessment.
** p<0.01, one-tailed.

language input in English was positively and significantly related to every

measure of English development at every time point and negatively related
to every measure of Spanish development at every time point, with the
single exception of no relation to grammatical complexity at 1 ;10, when
many children were at zero. The relation of input to the onset of word
combinations was tested by comparing the children who were and were
not combining words in each language at 1; 10. The 31 children who
were combining words in English heard proportionately more English than
the 16 children who were not (t(45)=2.09, p=0.02, one-tailed) ; the 34
children who were combining words in Spanish heard proportionately less
English (and thus more Spanish) than the 13 who were not (t(45)=x2.38,
p=0.01, one-tailed).

DISCUSSION

The present analyses tested two hypotheses : (1) that children exposed to
only one language will acquire that language more rapidly than children
exposed to two languages will acquire each of those languages ; and (2) that
in children exposed to two languages, the rate of development of each
language will vary as a function of the children’s relative amount of
exposure. Both hypotheses were supported in the data.
One set of analyses compared a group of bilingually exposed children
(whose balance of English to Spanish exposure was on average equal but
with a range from 10% English to 90 % English) to a group of children
exposed only to English. Using measures of the children’s English and
Spanish language development from the MacArthur-Bates inventories at the
ages of 1 ; 10, 2; 1 and 2 ; 6, comparisons revealed that the English language
skills of monolingual English-learning children were more advanced and
19
 H O F F E T A L.

improved more rapidly during this period than the English language skills
of bilingual Spanish- and English-learning children – even though the
bilingually developing children were more advanced in English than they
were in Spanish, where comparison was possible. The effect was seen for
every measure of language development, including measures of vocabulary
and grammar and including the timing of the achievement of the basic
milestone of combining words.
The findings of this analysis provide a clear answer to the practical
question of whether children exposed to two languages typically acquire
each at the same rate as monolinguals : they do not. These findings do not
contradict the findings from earlier studies that bilingual children acquire
each language within the normal range of variation for monolingual children
(Paradis & Genesee, 1996 ; Petitto et al., 2001 ; Petitto & Kovelman, 2003) ;
the normal range of variation in the rate of language development is large
(Bialystok, 2001), and the distributions of single-language skill levels in
monolingual and bilingual groups overlap. However, the present findings
of mean between-group differences contradict the assertion that children
acquire two languages as the same pace as one. Importantly for the
theoretical implications of this study, not only vocabulary but also
grammatical development, including the timing of the achievement of the
major milestone of producing word combinations, was affected by dual
language input.
These findings also address the size of the effect of bilingualism. In the
present data, bilingualism accounted for between 10 and 22 percent of the
variance in English language skill, depending on outcome measure. In terms
of Cohen’s d, the size of the effects ranged from moderate to large (Cohen,
1988). In terms of percentile scores, the average difference between the
monolinguals and bilinguals as groups across this developmental period
ranged from 10 to 21 percentile points, again depending on the measure.
These children were, on average, more advanced in English than in Spanish.
Thus, the size of the effect of bilingualism on their English language skills
provides a conservative estimate of the size of the effect on the acquisition of
one language associated with the simultaneous acquisition of another.
Visual inspection of the figures provides another way to gauge the size
of the effect of bilingualism. In terms of English vocabulary size, the
bilingually developing children at 2; 1 were at essentially the same level as
the monolingual children at 1; 10. With respect to the percent of children
producing word combinations in English, the gap between the monolingual
and bilingually developing children that was observable at 1;10 had closed
by 2 ; 1. In terms of the grammatical complexity score and MLU of the
longest utterances in English, the bilingual children at 2 ;1 were more
advanced than the monolingual children at 1;10. Thus, one could describe
the data as showing that the lag associated with bilingualism at this very
20
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

early stage is less than three months. Thus, while these data show that it
takes longer to acquire two languages than one, these data also show that it
does not take twice as long – at least to reach the level of monolingual
children at two years. The size of the lag increases with age, however,
because the rate of English language development in the monolingual group
is faster than the rate of development in the bilingual group.
These findings of differences between monolingual and bilingual children
in their rates of single language development must be considered in the
context of two other findings from the present study. The first is that the
bilingual children were not different from the monolingual children on two
measures that took into account their skill in both languages. The second is
that the size of the difference between monolingual and bilingual children
was smaller and often not statistically significant when only English-
dominant bilinguals were considered.
Two measures that considered the bilingual children’s accomplishments
in both languages were analyzed. A measure of total vocabulary, which
summed the bilingual children’s English and Spanish scores, revealed the
bilingual and monolingual groups to be virtually identical, consistent with
findings from other studies (e.g. Junker & Stockman, 2002 ; Pearson et al.,
1993 ; Thordardottir et al., 2006). The bilingually developing children
were learning words at the same rate as monolingual children, but their
word learning was, like their language exposure, divided between two
languages. A measure of achieving combinatorial speech, which counted the
achievement if it occurred in either language, also revealed the bilingually
developing children as not different from the monolingual children. Thus,
bilingual children appear to acquire lexical knowledge at the same rate as
monolingual children, albeit distributed across two languages, and bilingual
children acquire the basic ability to combine words in at least one language
on a timetable not discernibly different from that of monolingual children.
We note, however, that this measure of combining words in either language
is not a grammatical parallel to the total vocabulary measure. If achieve-
ment of this milestone in a language depends on exposure to that particular
language, then bilingually developing children with balanced exposure
might well achieve that milestone later than monolingual children. That was
not the case in the present data, but comparison of children at an earlier age
might reveal such an effect. In the present samples, the achievement of
producing combinatorial speech in English was significant later in bilinguals
than monolinguals, but the achievement of producing combinatorial speech
in any language was not.
The finding that language balance attenuated the effect of bilingualism
was revealed in analyses in which the bilingually developing children were
categorized according to whether their language exposure was English
dominant, balanced or Spanish dominant, and these three groups were
21
 H O F F E T A L.

compared to each other and to the monolingual children. The size of

the difference between the monolingual group and the English-dominant
bilingual group was always less than the size of the difference between the
monolinguals and all the bilingually developing children combined, and in
many cases the difference between monolinguals and English-dominant
bilinguals was not significant. Thus, on at least some measures of language
development, bilingually developing children are not discernibly different
from monolingual children – in their stronger language.
The results of these analyses by subgroup also address two related
hypotheses that have been proposed regarding the effects of bilingual
exposure : (1) that the cost of bilingual exposure is mitigated in
circumstances of balanced input. That is, if most of a child’s language
exposure is in Spanish, then his or her English language development will
of course be delayed, but if language exposure is roughly balanced, then,
perhaps, both languages could develop at the same rate as one develops in
monolingual children. And (2) that there is a threshold of 20 % of input
required for language learning. There is some evidence for the view that
balanced input confers a particular advantage for phonological development
in infancy (Werker, Weikum & Yoshida, 2006), but the hypothesis that
balanced input has unique effects has not been explicitly tested in other
domains. The 20 % threshold hypothesis appears to have originated in
Pearson et al.’s (1997) observation that children who hear less than 20 % of
their input in one language are often reluctant to speak that language. It is
worth noting that Pearson et al. explicitly did not claim that children
with less than 20% exposure will not acquire the language – only that it
is difficult to obtain speech samples from these children in the less-
frequently-used language.
The present findings are not consistent with the hypothesis that balanced
language exposure results in bilingual development in which the vocabulary
or grammar of both languages are acquired at the same rate as monolingual
development. The balanced bilingual group differed from the monolingual
group in English vocabulary and in utterance length in English utterances,
although not on the percent of children combining words at 1;10 and not
on the grammatical complexity measure. Taken as a whole, the pattern of
findings in the comparisons of the three groups of bilinguals to monolinguals
in English and the comparisons among the three bilingually developing
groups with respect to their development of English and Spanish are entirely
consistent with the argument that language development is a function of the
relative amount of exposure. Across all measures of English skill, the English
exposure-dominant bilinguals looked most like the monolinguals, followed
by the balanced exposure bilinguals and the Spanish exposure-dominant
bilinguals, in that order. Furthermore, within the bilinguals, looking at
Spanish skill as the outcome, the balanced exposure bilinguals were between
22
 EFFECTS OF DUAL LANGUAGE EXPOSURE

the English exposure-dominant and Spanish exposure-dominant groups. In

some cases, the between-group differences failed to reach statistical signifi-
cance because subcategorizing the bilinguals in terms of the balance of their
language exposure reduced both the size of between-group difference and the
statistical power of the analysis.
The effect of relative amount of input on the rate of English and Spanish
development within the bilinguals was also revealed in analyses that treated
relative exposure to English as a continuous variable. Within the bilingually
developing children, the proportion of their input that was in English was
positively related to every continuous measure of English development and
negatively related to every measure of Spanish development, except where
the measure suffered from a floor effect. The relative amount of input in
English was also related to the timing of the achievement of the milestone of
producing word combinations in each language. At 1;10, the children who
were combining words in English had relatively more exposure to English
than those who were not, and those who were combining words in Spanish
had relatively more exposure to Spanish. It is also consistent with this
evidence of input effects that the children were on average more advanced in
English than Spanish. Their home language exposure was almost equally
balanced between English and Spanish (51.17% English (SD=28.78) at
1; 10 and 54.68% English (SD=31.30) at 2 ; 6), but other data on this
sample show that the children heard more English in out-of-home activities
than they did at home (Place & Hoff, in press).
The finding that language exposure predicts vocabulary development in
bilingual children is not new and does not contradict any theory of language
development. All accounts of language acquisition describe children as
learning words from input. The finding that grammatical development in
bilingual children is also a function of language exposure is new, and
the finding that the timing of the achievement of the major milestone of
producing word combinations is a function of input does contradict
theoretical positions that posit a more maturational basis to the development
of grammar and concomitant robustness in circumstances of dual language
input (e.g., Petitto et al., 2001). Consistent with findings of input effects in
monolingual children (Hoff, 2006), the effects on bilingually developing
children’s grammatical development often appeared to be smaller than the
effects on vocabulary development. To understand how input influences the
rate of grammatical development will require further research. The effects on
vocabulary and grammar observed here may reflect direct effects of access to
input on both vocabulary and grammatical development or indirect effects
on grammar via the dependence of grammatical on lexical development
(Marchman et al., 2004) and/or a necessary synchrony between the
acquisition of vocabulary and grammar that arises from the nature of the
language learning process (Snedeker, Geren & Shafto, 2007).
23
 H O F F E T A L.

These results have some practical implications. Although they do not

explain why bilingualism is a risk factor with respect to academic success,
they do demonstrate a real effect of dual language input apart from the
frequently confounded factor of low socioeconomic status. They make the
case that it is perfectly normal for bilingually developing children to lag
behind monolingual children in the rate at which they acquire each of their
languages. These results also contribute to the ongoing discussion about
assessing and educating bilingual children by showing that skill level in a
single language is not the same indicator of ability for bilingual children that
it is for monolingual children. A bilingual child is cognitively more able
than his single-language skills reflect.
There are limitations to the present study. Children’s language skills were
assessed with only a single instrument, and only production was assessed.
Bilingual children may well have different patterns of language competence,
and these will require multiple instruments to adequately describe them
(see, for example, Oller, Pearson & Cobo-Lewis, 2007). Also, only a small
window of development – from 1; 10 to 2 ; 6 – was described. It will be
important for future research to describe the continuing trajectories of these
foundational oral language skills as children approach school entry.

CONCLUSIONS

The present findings demonstrate that, on average, children acquiring two

languages will lag behind children acquiring only one – when the bilingual
children’s skills in only one of their languages are assessed. Although
evidence in the previous literature suggested this conclusion, the present
findings are the first to clearly demonstrate that this effect of bilingualism is
observed in high socioeconomic status samples and is observed for measures
of grammatical development, as well as for vocabulary. The present findings
also demonstrate that the size of the difference between monolingual and
bilingual children’s skills in any language depends on how much of that
language the bilingual child hears. Because the range of variation in both
monolingual and bilingual development is large and because most bilingual
children hear more of one language than the other, many bilingual children
have single-language skills within the normal range of variation for
monolinguals, particularly in their stronger language.

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