ABSTRACT
Bilingualism and multilingualism are often presented as a problem that has to be addressed or dealt with somehow. But in fact, most of the world’s population speak more than one language on a daily basis. There are fewer than 200 countries in the world and an estimated 6,000 languages (Li Wei 2000a: 3), so it is clear that in many countries, knowledge of several languages will be necessary. In the introduction to their Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication, Auer and Li Wei (2007: 2) ask whether it would not be more logical to view monolingualism as a problem, albeit a curable one. Nonetheless, monolingualism is generally treated as some kind of norm that bilingualism and multilingualism are compared to. Auer and Li Wei explain that part of the reason for this may be that the discipline of linguistics has emerged from European thinking about language, where nation states have been associated with a single language. This is not, of course, to say that European countries have ever been genuinely monolingual, as we saw in the stories from the Iberian Peninsula in Chapter 10. This chapter is more technical than other sections of the book, and it
is intended to give a survey of some of the interesting research that has been carried out into the field of children’s bilingual language development. The information given here is by no means complete, but it should serve to give some information to those who want to know a little more, and the references given here will suffice to set those whose interest is deeper on the path to further reading. Once you start reading your way into a field such as childhood bilingualism you find that each paper or book will lead to dozens of others, but that some names, those whose research is particularly central or new, will recur in many reference lists. If you find this kind of research survey uninteresting, you are, naturally, free to skip this chapter!
