Hi Monika,

Have you read this paper?  

MONTANARI, S. (2009). Multi-word combinations and the emergence of differentiated ordering patterns in early trilingual development. Bilingualism, 12(4), 503-519. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.library.carleton.ca/10.1017/S1366728909990265

Hi Don,

Thank you so much for recommending this interesting paper. I did not come across this research when searching the literature. It may be that the literature on trilingualism mainly involves case studies, rather than large group studies. Still, case studies are helpful! 

All the best,

Monika

I think you are right.  They seem to mostly be based on case studies.  

Don

Hi Mahmood, 

Thanks a lot for answering the question. I agree that the amount of exposure may be the predominant factor in early trilingualism. I have a 21 month son who lives in the U.S. and acquires Polish (mother's language, about 39%), English (father's language 37%), and Spanish (nanny's language 25%). At 18 months he underwent a formal behavioral assessment by a neuropsychologist. The assessment was conducted in English and it had a language component. He scored very high on language production (97%) and poor on language production (4%). Due to this huge hiatus in the results, the neuropsychologist recommended an additional evaluation by a speech therapist, which will take place soon. My son has recently become more talkative but I want his milestones to be evaluated. And yes, we always address our child in our native languages.

Pleasant regards,

Monika

Hi Monica!

There was a keynote talk at GALA (Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition) this year about simultaneous trilingualism by Natascha Müller. The main points seemed to be this:

- research is scarce, and include mostly case studies 

- language development seems delayed if looking at languages individually, but not when adding the languages up (very much like early bilinguals)

Abstract with some references here: http://www.uibcongres.org/GALA13/ponencia.en.html?mes=48&ordpon=1

Hi Emma,

This is such a helpful link. It must have been an exciting talk. I will check more of the author's work and will perhaps even contact her directly.

Thank you so much for your response.

Best,

Monika

Dear Monika,

If your child is only 21 months old, I think it is premature to classify him as having any difficulty with language, especially if his receptive knowledge is high and he appears communicative in other ways -- reacting to others, gesturing, etc.  All evidence shows that children growing up in an environment of more than one language take a little longer to sort out the phonology, vocabulary, and morpho-syntax of their languages, simply because language learning entails, among other things, figuring out, from the context in which they hear language, the mappings between language and meaning.  When you are hearing and using each language a lower percentage of the time in each context than a monolingual would, it makes sense that this process takes longer.  In the end, the multilingual child catches up with the monolingual in most regards, as long as s/he continues to experience the language.  

There is no evidence that a one parent-one language practice is more beneficial than others, as long as the child is hearing each language.  However, if one of the parents is the sole source of one of the languages [e.g., no one else in the community speaks that language], then, yes, that parent needs to speak that language with the child if it is desirable for the child to learn that language.  I invite you to look at some of our research on bilinguals -- the principles are the same for trilingual/multilingual children.  The following might be helpful in relation to your questions.  

All best wishes for you and your child.

Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller, & Thomas, Enlli Môn.  2009.  Bilingual first-language development: Dominant language takeover, threatened minority language take-up.  Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12, 213-237.

Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller.  2007.  Miami and North Wales, so far and yet so near: Constructivist account of morpho-syntactic development in bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10 (3), 224-247.

Gathercole, Virginia C. Mueller, Thomas, Enlli Môn, Roberts, Emily, Hughes, Catrin, & Hughes, Emma K.  2013.  Why assessment needs to take exposure into account: Vocabulary and grammatical abilities in bilingual children.  In V. C. Mueller Gathercole (ed.), Issues in the Assessment of Bilinguals.   Bristol: Multilingual Matters.  20-55.

Dear Virginia,

Great thanks for the interesting and thorough answer as well as the references to your research. I will definitely have a look!

Best wishes to you as well!

Monika

Monika: Just a few thoughts that may be relevant. Language delay is a clinical condition, unrelated to the number of languages in a child’s repertoire. The ambiguity of the English word ‘language’, together with the fact that most research on language disorders as well as on multilingualism is available in English, fosters confusion between the two. So does the belief that multilingualism has ‘effects’ on what are in fact milestones of *monolingual* development.

I’ve discussed these issues in several publications, e.g.:  

‘First language acquisition and teaching’:  

https://www.academia.edu/1107744/First_language_acquisition_and_teaching

‘Language and language’:  

http://beingmultilingual.blogspot.com/2011/11/language-and-language.html

‘The effects of monolingualism’:  

http://beingmultilingual.blogspot.com/2011/07/effects-of-monolingualism.html

All best to you

Madalena

Magdalena, thank you for the thoughts and links!

Best wishes,

Monika

 "He scored very high on language production (97%) and poor on language production (4%)." 

    Is this a production error?

Yes, apologies. There was a typo: he scored 97% on language COMPREHENSION, not production.

Thank you noticing

Comprehension leads production in normal development and in all developmental speech/language pathologies, I believe, so it is debatable how seriously one should take this discrepancy.   Remember the story about the son of King Croesus.   It is likely some (intelligent) children choose not to speak for various reasons.

Yes, absolutely. Comprehension does lead production in language acquisition. My son has recently become much more talkative so his (almost) silent phase may be over. Thanks!

God created human to be multilingual when acquited naturally on the daily basis. However, if parents keep using one language, their kids' language skills and function have been stereotyed in one language. People misunderstand that some language mixing(we call it code-switchin) hinder young children's language development however, they finally focus on developing each language of tree languages at the same time. Do worries, but keep using three language in rich literacy envrionment from now on. Reading good books in each language will be best way to develop additive trilngual development without subracting any of those. Trilingual people are tri-cultural. They are resources of global era. What are blessings they are onto us!

Hi Monika,

you may find of some interest our new paper on trilinguals (acquiring Polish and English plus one more language in the UK):

Article Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowl...

Best regards,

Ewa

Hi Ewa,

Thank you very much for sharing your recent work with me. Very interesting!

Best wishes,

Monika

There is away to make children not confused with two or more languages as simultaneous bilinguals which may result delay in their language development; applying "one parent one language" policy. This plan was successfully done by Michael Clyne to his daughter. The following is his work.

Clyne, Michael. (2007). From bilingual becomes linguist. Translating Lives: Living with two languages and cultures. 12-25. Mary Besemeres and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.). Queensland: University of Queensland.

This policy is also done by my relatives who live in Germany. From baby, all children only speak German to his father and only Indonesian to their mother. All children now grow perfect bilinguals.