eans that in traditionally monolingual societies such as The Netherlands, multilingualism is rapidly becoming the norm. This means that bilingual children, globally the majority, cannot be considered unusual. Although much research has investigated the language of child bilinguals in general, several unanswered questions remain regarding the status of early child bilingualism. For example:

–    What is the optimal age at which exposure to a second language should take place?
–    Does an early start necessarily guarantee success?
–    How much input is needed for language acquisition to take place succesfully?

The Early Child Bilingualism project is investigating these questions by examining the linguistic development of children growing up with English and Dutch.