The Role of Language Discrimination in Mutual Exclusivity as shown by 2-yr-old Simultaneous Bilinguals

Previous studies in the field of lexical acquisition in simultaneous bilinguals have found that these children do not engage as readily as their monolingual peers in the process of disambiguation. Because disambiguation is the task most often utilized to prove the existence of the important word-learning heuristic of mutual exclusivity, it is surprising that we do not see bilingual children displaying disambiguation to the same extant as their monolingual peers. However, there have not been many studies performed that assess whether or not the included interaction of differentiation of phonemic categories and discrimination between the two native languages affects the overall ability of 2-year-old simultaneous bilinguals to adequately display disambiguation. I propose a study in which the importance of phonotactics, adequate knowledge of separate phonemic inventories, and an understanding of language differentiation are applied to the task of disambiguation. I will ultimately claim that, when presented with a novel word that is possible in only one of a bilingual\u27s two languages , bilinguals are more likely to successfully perform disambiguation to a level comparable to that of their monolingual age-matched peers