ABSTRACT
This chapter exposes almost equally to the two languages concerned from birth, and the language acquisition process took place within the environment of the children’s families. In all the cases considered, the two languages spoken by the children’s parents were differentiated in the sense that one parent spoke one language and the other parent the other language. The finding of a minimal overlap between early words and gestures for a very short period was observed not only in single case studies but also in larger samples of children. Progressively children start to use gestures and words with corresponding meanings and it is only in a subsequent phase, in the second year of life, that the spoken modality becomes the predominant mode of communication. Taking into account similarities and differences of bilingualism applied to hearing versus deaf children, a similar educational model has been successfully applied to bilingual experiences carried on in mainstream Italian schools.
