REVIEWS doi:10.1017/S0305000908008775

Research on child bilingual development has experienced a renewed impetus in recent years, exploring aspects of early bilingualism and second-language learning that have called into question widely held assumptions. For a while it seemed that work on transfer/interference, unequal de-velopment and dominant language-induced attrition had come to be disfavored, undermining an ideal standard of a completely balanced bilingual with equivalent competence in each language. In their book, Yip & Matthews ’ extensive report of their work addresses difficult issues that practitioners and specialists have tended to shy away from. The book takes up what is one of the central objectives of current research today on early bilingual development: the construction of a model that can account for BOTH simultaneous balanced bilingual development (of two first languages: 2L1 development) and imbalanced bilingual development, in its different expressions and ultimate attainment outcomes, for example, delayed development of one language, first language competenc