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The majority of the world's children grow up learning two or more languages. The study of early bilingualism is central to current psycholinguistics, offering insights into issues such as transfer and interference in development. From an applied perspective, it poses a universal challenge to language assessment practices throughout childhood, as typically developing bilingual children usually underperform relative to monolingual norms when assessed in one language only. We measured vocabulary with Communicative Development Inventories for 372 24-month-old toddlers learning British English and one Additional Language out of a diverse set of 13 (Bengali, Cantonese, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hindi-Urdu, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, and Welsh). We furthered theoretical understanding of bilingual development by showing, for the first time, that linguistic distance between the child's two languages predicts vocabulary outcome, with phonological overlap related to expressive vocabulary, and word order typology and morphological complexity related to receptive vocabulary, in the Additional Language. Our study also has crucial clinical implications: we have developed the first bilingual norms for expressive and receptive vocabulary for 24-month-olds learning British English and an Additional Language. These norms were derived from factors identified as uniquely predicting CDI vocabulary measures: the relative amount of English versus the Additional Language in child-directed input and parental overheard speech, and infant gender. The resulting UKBTAT tool was able to accurately predict the English vocabulary of an additional group of 58 bilinguals learning an Additional Language outside our target range. This offers a pragmatic method for the assessment of children in the majority language when no tool exists in the Additional Language. Our findings also suggest that the effect of linguistic distance might extend beyond bilinguals' acquisition of early vocabulary to encompass broader cognitive processes, and could constitute a key factor in the study of the debated bilingual advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks at a study that estimates the effect of linguistic distance on vocabulary development. Study highlights include a preliminary selection of significant predictors from analysis of covariance, the use of test language or TestLang as a repeated measures factor to examine the differential impact of predictors on English and Additional Language, and strong associations between Language Community and predictor variables.

The article describes the methods used in a study on the norms and effects of linguistic distance in a sample of 430 bilingual toddlers learning British English and additional languages. Study highlights include measurement of four parent-assessed outcome variables at 24 months, collection of data for 430 children between February 2014 and July 2016, and a list of all variables and predictors used in the analyses.

The article looks at a study that measures the relative contribution of linguistic distance to the acquisition of a bilingual toddler's two languages. Study highlights include phonological overlap between Additional Languages and British English, development of bilingual norms specified for the proportion of a particular language that a child hears in the input, and the feasibility of assessing bilingual toddlers in the majority language only.

The article looks at a study that establishes the reliability of UK Bilingual Toddlers Assessment Tool for bilingual children learning British English and its application to non-target additional language learners. Topics covered include the Plymouth Language Exposure Questionnaire, requirement for predictors to reach significance in the analysis of covariances and the subsequent linear mixed models, and the difference between a child's predicted and observed scores as a percentile.