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This article examines factors that promote active multilingualism. For this purpose, the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test" was used with 48 children. Their results were linked to a parental questionnaire designed to evaluate the children's linguistic input in their immediate environment. The study shows that, besides a minimum amount of linguistic input, the language constellation (i.e. presence/absence of the majority language at home) is also decisive. At the same time, it seems irrelevant for active bi- and trilingualism which family language policies are chosen (e.g. One person-One Language), as long as the promotion of the minority language does not only take place institutionally, but also at home. Overall, the results indicate that attending a bilingual kindergarten/school alone does not lead to active multilingualism. Family factors and family support seem to be decisive. These include the creation of a linguistically stimulating environment through cultural contact and the language constellation within the family.

Acquisitionists generally assume a relation between code-mixing in young bilingual and trilingual children and language dominance. In our cross-sectional study we investigated the possible relation between code-mixing and language dominance in 122 children raised in Spain or Germany. They were bilingual, trilingual or multilingual, the latter acquiring more than three languages. The definition of language dominance is grounded on Birdsong's (2014. Dominance in bilingualism: Foundations of measurement, with insights from the study of handedness. In C. Silva-Corvalán, & J. Treffers-Daller (Eds.), "Language Dominance in Bilinguals: Issues of operationalization and measurement" (pp. 85-105). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) distinction between domains and dimensions. The main result of our study is that code-mixing is rare in a monolingual setting which means that bilingual, trilingual and multilingual children are able to behave monolingually. Domain-specific language dominance can explain the relatively high mixing rate in the Catalan tests but concerning the dimensions of language dominance no relation was found between the children's code-mixing and language (un)balance. A separate analysis of intra- and intersentential mixing reveals that intersentential mixing is determined by the typological proximity between the child's languages. All instances of intrasentential code-mixing, were insertional.

Cognitive science has demonstrated that multilinguals (including children) show a cognitive advantage over monolinguals. Linguistics has provided evidence that multilinguals (including children) are able to successfully separate their lexicons and grammars and negotiate multilingual environments. Apart from these achievements, linguistics has generally failed to demonstrate a multilingual advantage related to the multilingual's linguistic proficiency. The present article summarizes the current literature, which shows that there are first indications of an acceleration effect in multilingual children. This effect is discernable if the languages radically differ, if the child uses a 'weak' language (often a minority language), if the child acquires more than two languages from birth, and if contact with the language exhibiting the acceleration effect is delayed until kindergarten age. This kind of acceleration effect represents an explanation gap under current theorizing in cognitive science and linguistics, and calls for a new language acquisition theory, a best-of-breed solution for further research in language acquisition. AAiMLL (Acquisition Advantages in MultiLingual Learners) combines cognitive and linguistic aspects with a threshold theory. It is claimed here that the multilingual child learns from two cognitive acquisition strategies. One is fed by grammatical features, and requires the child to (re-)use already acquired knowledge by generalizing to new domains. The other strategy enables the child to consider rejected alternatives of earlier decisions in one language, for use in the other language. An acceleration effect related to the multilingual's linguistic proficiency is indicative of the success of both strategies. The success of the strategies is argued to be related to a threshold of language usage from a quantitative or a qualitative perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]