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Translation Equivalents and the Emergence of Multiple Lexicons in Early

Trilingual Development

Article  in  First Language · February 2010

DOI: 10.1177/0142723709350528

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 FIRST
Article LANGUAGE
First Language
30(1) 102–125
Translation Equivalents and © The Author(s) 2010
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DOI: 10.1177/0142723709350528
Lexicons in Early Trilingual http://fla.sagepub.com

Development

Simona Montanari
California State University, Los Angeles

Abstract
This study examines lexical differentiation in early trilingual development through an
analysis of the translation equivalents (TEs) produced by a Tagalog–Spanish–English
trilingual child.The child’s cumulative vocabulary between 1;4 and 2;0 was reconstructed
through diary records and audio-recordings, and the extent to which phonetically
distinct equivalent doublets and triplets were represented in her cumulative lexicon
was examined. The results indicate that TEs were produced from early on, similarly to
bilingual children. However, the amount of input heard in each language determined the
number and types of equivalents acquired.  Also, learning a second TE took less time than
learning a first, suggesting that the initial differentiation of the lexicon as evidenced by
doublets might facilitate the emergence of multiple lexical systems.

Keywords
lexical development, lexical differentiation, translation equivalents, trilingualism, vocabulary

Introduction
Many children around the world grow up in multilingual environments. In fact, it has
been speculated that the number of children exposed to more than one language from
birth is similar, if not larger, than the number of those who speak only one language
(Tucker, 1998). Although governments in many countries deliberately depict monolin-
gualism as the norm, multilinguals are predominant not only in Asia and Africa but also
in Europe and North America. For instance, according to figures reported by the US
2000 Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov), almost 20% of the US population speaks

Corresponding author:
Simona Montanari, Department of Child and Family Studies, California State University, 5151 State University
Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA; email: smontan2@calstatela.edu
Montanari 103

a language other than English, and over 40% of Californian residents are multilingual.
In southern Californian cities like Los Angeles or Santa Ana, the percentage of children
growing up with more than one language oscillates between 60 and 80%. Multilingual
exposure is, therefore, not so uncommon as the general literature on children’s language
acquisition might suggest.
Nevertheless, little is known about the acquisition of multiple languages within the
same individual. This lack of knowledge has produced contradictory beliefs about the
advantages and disadvantages of early multilingualism. On the one hand, it has been
argued that young children can effortlessly acquire two or more languages if exposed to
them in early life, because the ability for multilingual acquisition ‘is an essential’ but not
‘a contingent property of the human language making capacity’ (Meisel, 2001, p. 12). On
the other hand, the view that multilingualism might cause developmental language
delays seems to prevail among the public at large and there is evidence suggesting that
multilinguals develop some aspects of language more slowly than monolinguals
(Gathercole, 2002; Silva-Corvalán & Montanari, 2008).
Echoes of these views can also be found in contemporary research on childhood bilin-
gualism. Starting from the 1980s, an increasingly large number of investigators have indeed
turned to the study of bilingual first language acquisition, focusing on whether bilingual
children can differentiate their languages in production early on and whether they acquire
language-specific constraints at the same age as monolinguals. At least two opposing theo-
ries have been proposed. Early findings from bilingual acquisition studies were interpreted
as evidence that, although children are exposed to distinct sets of input, they go through an
initial stage in which their two languages are represented in a unitary or fused system
(Unitary Language System hypothesis, as coined by Genesee, 1989), at the phonological
(Leopold, 1939; Schnitzer & Krasinski, 1994; Vogel, 1975), lexical (Clark, 1987; Volterra
& Taeschner, 1978), and syntactic level (Murrell, 1966; Redlinger & Park, 1980; Volterra
& Taeschner, 1978). Although these researchers never openly argued that developing bilin-
guals are ‘slower’ than monolinguals when it comes to language learning, the proposal of
an initial unitary language system does imply that young multilinguals go through pro-
longed language development as they differentiate their languages early on, an idea in line
with the public perception of language delay in young bilinguals (Petitto et al., 2001).
In correcting the methodological problems of these earlier studies, however, research-
ers holding views under the Differentiated Language System hypothesis (Genesee, 1989)
have recently shown that by the time bilingual-to-be children begin talking, they already
show signs of language differentiation, in their phonology (Deuchar & Quay, 2000;
Paradis, 2001), in their lexicon (Deuchar & Quay, 2000; Holowka, Brosseau-Lapré, &
Petitto, 2002; Lanvers, 1999; Pearson, Fernández, & Oller, 1995), and in their language
choice (Comeau, Genesee, & Lapaquette, 2003; Deuchar & Quay, 2000; Nicoladis &
Genesee, 1996; Nicoladis & Secco, 2000). Likewise, as soon as there is evidence for
syntax, bilingual children have been found to use their two syntaxes differentially (see
De Houwer, 2005, for a review). Thus, it appears that bilingual children can be credited
with language differentiation from very early on in development.
Despite this recent effort toward the study of bilingual acquisition, relatively little
work has been done on early trilingual development, and research on language differen-
tiation in children raised with three languages is literally in its infancy (Montanari, 2009a,
104 First Language 30(1)

2009b; Quay, 2001, 2008). Montanari (2009a) and Quay (2008) have shown that trilingual-
to-be children can show signs of pragmatic differentiation, i.e., they can modify the
amount that they use of each language to match the language of their addressees – from
as early as 1;10. In both studies, the children selected the appropriate language following
the interlocutor’s language from the earliest sessions. However, switches to inappropri-
ate languages were common due to vocabulary gaps, the interlocutors’ language prefer-
ences, their proficiency in each language, and their expectations as to appropriate
language use. In a follow-up study, Montanari (2009b) found that the same child’s early
combinations (produced between 1;7 and 2;1) displayed differentiated word orders fol-
lowing the basic patterns of each input language. These results were interpreted as evi-
dence that signs of early differentiation might be found even beyond the pragmatic
domain, in the realm of syntax.
While these studies indicate that trilingual children might differentiate their languages
close to their second birthday, it remains to be seen whether the same is true earlier in
development. The child in Quay’s first study (2001), a developing Japanese–English–
German trilingual boy growing up in Japan, failed to show much use of the two minority
languages while addressing his parents between 1;1 and 1;10, suggesting that not all
children who are raised with three languages might end up producing/acquiring all three.
No other study to date has systematically examined whether simultaneous trilingual chil-
dren produce/differentiate between their languages in the very first months of produc-
tion. Early trilingual development provides an interesting case for the investigation of
children’s ability to develop separate languages. On the one hand, if it is uneconomical
for children to set up two or more linguistic systems, or if a relatively large amount of
exposure to each input language is necessary for differentiation, early exposure to three
sets of input is more likely to result in a unitary language system than early exposure to
two. On the other hand, however, simultaneous exposure to three languages might even
lead to an ‘enhanced language discrimination capacity,’ making language differentiation
‘precociously available’ (Bosch & Sebastián-Gallés, 2001, p. 79).
It is the aim of this study to contribute to the discussion of language differentiation in
early trilingual development by examining the emergence of differentiated lexicons in a
Tagalog–Spanish–English trilingual child. Given that the earliest unit of contrast in child
speech has been argued to be the word or formulaic phrase (Vihman & Velleman, 2000),
any investigation of language differentiation should indeed start with the lexicon. In
practice, the study of lexical differentiation has involved establishing how early children
are able to produce translation equivalents (TEs), and, as a consequence, to develop dif-
ferentiated ‘word lists’ in each language. Early theorists, in particular Volterra and
Taeschner (1978), claimed that, at the earliest stage of lexical development, children who
are acquiring two languages simultaneously reject TEs. This is because they have a uni-
tary lexical system in which a lexical item for a concept in one language (such as dog)
pre-empts the acquisition of the word’s translation in the other language (i.e., perro). It
is only when they reach a vocabulary of about 150 words, and thus realize that they are
dealing with different languages, that young bilinguals start acquiring cross-language
synonyms.
The idea that children avoid synonymy in the early stages of lexical development was
further reinforced by Clark’s (1987) Principle of Contrast in lexical acquisition, which
Montanari 105

‘states that any difference in form in a language marks a difference in meaning’ (p. 2).
Clark (1987, 1993) proposed that all children go through a stage in which they reject
‘second labels’; this stage, however, might not last as long in bilinguals as it does in
monolinguals. Subsequently, the principle of contrast was either discredited or invoked
by investigators working on bilingual lexical differentiation. In some studies, the fact
that bilingual children learned TEs in the early stages of lexical development was taken
as unequivocal evidence against the principle (Deuchar & Quay, 2000). At the same
time, however, other researchers argued that if contrast is assumed to be applying within
but not across lexical systems, then TEs can be interpreted as evidence that separate
vocabularies are being developed (Patterson & Pearson, 2004).
A number of investigators have now shown that bilingual-to-be children do not reject
cross-language synonyms either before or after their first 50 words (Deuchar & Quay,
2000; Holowka et al., 2002; Lanvers, 1999; Nicoladis, 1998; Nicoladis & Secco, 2000;
Pearson et al., 1995). Pearson et al. (1995), for instance, documented the existence of TEs
in the lexicons of 27 Spanish–English bilingual children both at early stages (in vocabular-
ies of 2–12 words) and at later stages (up to 500 words), and they found that the average
percentage of doublets, including both Spanish–English neutrals and phonetically distinct
pairs, was 30.8 at all observations. Similarly, Deuchar and Quay (2000), in their case study
of a developing Spanish–English bilingual child, reported an average of 33% of words with
TEs over 12 months of study, and 27% of these items in the child’s first 50 words. Holowka
et al. (2002), who examined bilingual lexical development both in children acquiring two
spoken languages (French and English) and in children learning a spoken and a sign lan-
guage (French and Langue des Signes Québecoise – LSQ), found strikingly similar results,
with an average of 27% of TEs in the first 50-word vocabularies of their three French–
English bilingual subjects, and an average of 29% of cross-language synonyms in the total
50-word lexicons of the French–LSQ group. Finally, in a case study of a developing
German–English bilingual child aged between 1;1 and 2;11, Lanvers (1999) observed that
equivalent learning never dropped below 25% during the study; however, relatively few
TEs were produced before the age of 1;5, that is, in the child’s first 50-word vocabulary.
The author interprets this finding as a direct reflection of changes in the linguistic environ-
ment, that is, high equivalent learning resulted from increased input in the weaker language
and more opportunities to acquire TEs. In sum, it is clear that despite the great variety of
these studies, bilingual children seem to build separate lexicons from early on in develop-
ment, if not from their very first words. It remains to be seen, however, whether this is also
the case for young multilinguals.
This study investigates the issue of lexical differentiation in early multilingual devel-
opment by examining the TEs produced by a Tagalog–Spanish–English trilingual child
between the age of 1;4 and 2;0. Although the same child was found to be able to differ-
entiate her languages pragmatically and syntactically from at least 1;10 (Montanari,
2009a, 2009b), it remains to be seen whether she was using somewhat differentiated
lexicons at an even earlier age. Therefore, the first goal of this study is to present a recon-
struction of the child’s cumulative vocabulary between these ages and assess the extent
to which TEs, in the form of phonetically distinct pairs and triplets, were represented in
her cumulative lexicon. Since over 30% of Tagalog lexical items have been estimated to
be Spanish loanwords and almost 10% of Tagalog words have an English source (Rau,
106 First Language 30(1)

1992), it is worth asking, once shared lexical items are discarded as potential cross-
language synonyms, how many doublets and triplets are acquired in the course of trilin-
gual lexical development. The second goal of this study is to assess whether the
production of TEs in trilingual lexical development is comparable to equivalent learning
in bilingual development. Given that the trilingual child needs to acquire three labels for
the same referent, and hence develop three lexicons, it is interesting to ask whether cross-
language synonyms appear earlier and/or at higher rates in the trilingual than in the
bilingual lexicon. The last goal is to examine in detail the acquisition of triplets, focusing
on whether learning a second equivalent takes less time than acquiring a first.
If cross-language synonyms are not produced or they are minimally acquired during
the period of study, it will be argued that the child has an initial single lexical system, as
argued by the proponents of the Unitary Language System hypothesis. Conversely, if
TEs are substantially and systematically produced from the earliest sessions, it will be
concluded that the child is differentiating her languages lexically. As Genesee and
Nicoladis (2006) have indeed argued, a rate of TEs as high as 20–25% of the child’s total
vocabulary can safely be assumed to constitute evidence that the child is building ‘dis-
tinct lexical systems.’

Method
The Child and Her Family
The data in this study come from a longitudinal investigation of trilingual first language acqui-
sition in a girl, Kathryn, born in Los Angeles to a Filipino-American mother and a Chilean-
American father. The child’s mother, a clinical lab scientist in her late thirties, came to the
United States from the Philippines at age 9; her father, also a clinical lab scientist in his late
thirties, moved to Los Angeles from Chile at age 12. From birth, Kathryn was addressed pri-
marily in Tagalog by her mother and maternal grandparents, in Spanish by her father and
paternal grandmother, and she heard English from her sister, 9 years older than herself. English
was also the main medium of communication in and outside the home, although both parents
usually switched to their native language when interacting with Tagalog or Spanish speakers.
Since the child was primarily taken care of by her Tagalog-speaking grandparents
until 2;2, it was estimated that, during the period of study her direct exposure to Tagalog
approximated 48%, her direct exposure to Spanish was roughly 29%, and her direct
exposure to English was 23%. These percentages, based on 12 waking hours per day,
seven days a week, were calculated in terms of the number of hours spent with each
interlocutor, as reported by the child’s parents in an initial interview (the family main-
tained the same work schedule and childcare arrangements during the study). The reader
should keep in mind, however, that English was the main medium of communication in
the home, and thus it might have been heard more often than estimated.

Data Collection
Diary notes along with 16 90-minute audio-recordings of Kathryn’s spontaneous
speech between ages 1;4 and 2;0 were used to reconstruct her trilingual lexicon. The
Montanari 107

diary records were kept by Kathryn’s Spanish-speaking grandmother, a Spanish–English

bilingual linguist and a trained phonetician; they were taken on a weekly or biweekly
basis, and they recorded the child’s utterances while she was interacting with her grand-
mother and other family members. These data include information on the child’s utter-
ances, their pronunciation (in narrow phonetic transcription), and the context in which
they were uttered. Although the diary records were kept by the child’s grandmother, most
of the notes were in fact taken during family gatherings when Kathryn’s mother, father,
and other family members were also present. In this way, not only Spanish but also
English and Tagalog utterances could easily be identified and noted down in the diary.
Priority was given to noting down new utterances, especially when the child became
more productive.
The recordings were made by the author once a month until the child was approxi-
mately 1;9; from then on, that is, when she became more productive, recordings were
made weekly or bi-weekly. All recordings were made at the child’s home during four
main activities: drawing, book-reading, eating meals, and free play. In each session
the child was being addressed, in a natural and uncontrolled discourse context, in
Tagalog by her mother, in Spanish by her father and/or grandmother, and in English by
her sister and/or the author. As shown in Montanari (2009a), the adults tended to use
their own language serially, with minimal or no code-switching between or within
utterances. Thus, unlike previous studies, the child was not recorded exclusively in the
presence of one language user; rather, the data were collected in a context in which
multiple languages were heard, a situation that reproduced more accurately the child’s
natural language environment. Since the same activities, with the same toys and books,
were performed with all interlocutors, a type of controlled situation was created inad-
vertently in which it was possible to test whether the child truly had TEs to name and
talk about the same toys and books.

Transcription
The recording sessions were transcribed on the day following the session to maintain the
most faithful record of the non-verbal context. Passages in which the adults were talking
to each other and Kathryn did not participate in the conversation were omitted from the
transcriptions. The recordings were initially transcribed in regular orthography, together
with an identification of unintelligible and unclear passages, English translations, and
information about non-verbal events that became relevant to the interaction and clarified
the discourse. The child’s utterances were transcribed in regular orthography if they were
clearly comprehensible as words of a specific language; when this was not the case,
narrow phonetic transcription was used. The transcriptions were further checked by
Kathryn’s mother, by a Tagalog-speaking assistant, and by a Spanish–English bilingual.
Disagreements on utterances/passages were discussed by listening several more times to
the recordings. When agreement was reached, the affected utterances/passages were
transcribed a second time adopting the consensus.
Three specific criteria were employed for word – and hence language – identification.
The child’s words were transcribed as Tagalog, English, or Spanish (or Tagalog/Spanish,
Tagalog/English, and Tagalog/English/Spanish words if they were common to two or
108 First Language 30(1)

Table 1.  An Excerpt from Kathryn’s Reconstructed Lexicon

Entry Word Pronunciation Age of English Context(s) of

appearance translation appearance

16. phone*/phone ['poʊn] ['foʊn] 1;5.08 Spa/Tag/Tag

17. pan/pan ['pan] 1;5.08 bread Spa/Eng/Tag
18. bye (bye)/bye (bye) [(ba) 'baɪ] 1;5.08 Spa/Spa/Tag
19. bola ['bola] 1;5.09 ball Tag/Spa/Eng
20. upo [u'po] [u'poʔ] 1;5.09 sit down Tag/Tag/Tag
21. wala na ['nana] ['lana] 1;5.09 all gone Tag/Spa/Spa
22. puno ['puno] ['punoʔ] 1;5.09 tree TagTag/Tag
23. maligo ['idʒo] ['igo] 1;5.09 take bath/shower Spa/Eng/Tag
24. susi ['ʃuʃe] ['suseʔ] 1;5.19 keys Tag/Spa/Tag
25. llaves ['ja:es] 1;5.19 keys Tag/Tag/Tag

Note: Tagalog words = simple italics; English words = bold italics; Spanish items = underlined italics. Words
common to or ambiguous between languages are presented in pairs/triplets (e.g., pan/pan ‘bread’). Words
with an asterisk (phone*) were categorized as Tagalog lexical items because Kathryn’s mother used them in
her speech and did not have/use their corresponding Tagalog equivalent.

three languages) only if: (1) the same sequence of sounds was consistently employed in
relation to the same set of referents (e.g., ['tatas] consistently used to refer to Kathryn’s
bottle of milk was coded as gatas, ‘milk’ in Tagalog); (2) the child’s form exhibited at
least two phonetic units in common with the adult form of the word or utterance (e.g.,
['ta] produced to refer to a bike was coded as the Spanish/Tagalog word /bisi'kleta/,
‘bike’); (3) the child’s verbal production displayed a similar pattern of syllabification and
stress to the adult’s form (e.g., ['papa] for ‘daddy’ was considered as having a Tagalog
source, /'papa/, because ‘daddy’ in Spanish has opposite stress /pa'pa/). This third crite-
rion was justified by the finding that children tend to replicate adult stress from their
earliest productions (Cruz-Ferreira, 2006; Petitto et al., 2001).
For reliability measures, a native speaker of Tagalog, a native speaker of Spanish, and
a native speaker of English were asked to examine 25% of the transcriptions, and code
each of the child’s utterances as: (1) ‘belonging to their native language’; (2) ‘not belong-
ing to their native language.’ Inter-rater agreement ranged from 95.5% for English to
98.2% for Spanish and 97.9% for Tagalog.

Reconstructing the Lexicon

The child’s cumulative lexicon was reconstructed by taking the first occurrence of each
lexical item from the diary notes and from the recording sessions’ transcriptions and
placing it, in its order of appearance, in a list, as shown in Table 1. Onomatopoeic sounds,
interjections such as ‘oh oh,’ and proper names were omitted since the same forms were
used by different language users. ‘Mom’ and ‘dad’ were however included because these
could be translated in the three languages.
Montanari 109

The entry number in the first column indicates the order of a word’s appearance. The
second column displays the adult form of the word produced by the child. The language
source of each word is indicated by the following conventions: Tagalog words are in ital-
ics, English words are in bold italics, and Spanish items are in underlined italics. Words
that are both Tagalog and Spanish or Tagalog and English are presented in pairs: kabayo/
caballo, ‘horse,’ bye/bye, and items that are Spanish, English, and Tagalog are given in
triplets: okay/okay/okay. Finally, entries with an asterisk (phone*, entry #16) are words
that are not Tagalog lexical items but they were categorized as such because Kathryn’s
mother commonly used them in her speech and did not have or did not use their corre-
sponding Tagalog equivalent. The third column shows the word’s pronunciation (or
pronunciations) according to IPA conventions; phonetic variations of the same lexical
item – if any – are only given for the first three recorded occurrences of the word. The
fourth column displays Kathryn’s age when the word first appeared in the data, the fifth
column the English translation, and the last column indicates the language context(s) in
which the first three occurrences of the word appeared, as defined by the language of the
adult with whom Kathryn was interacting.
It must be pointed out that Kathryn’s reconstructed lexicon is an approximation of her
actual lexical development. Diary notes were not taken every day and recordings were
not made every week during the period of study. Some lexical items might have appeared
earlier than they were reported and other items might not have been captured at all.
Despite these limitations, the diary notes coupled with the recordings seemed to provide
an exhaustive and detailed database of Kathryn’s early words in her three languages.

Coding Translation Equivalents

The next step was to identify pairs and triplets of TEs, calculate their percentage over
Kathryn’s cumulative vocabulary at each month, and examine the time interval between
the appearance of a word and its first and second TE. TEs were identified operationally
‘on the basis of the child’s interchangeable use of one word for another to refer to the
same object, event or process,’ as in Deuchar and Quay (2000, p. 53). Given that the
Tagalog, English, and Spanish data were all collected during the same activities, and
with the same toys and books, the child could be directly tested as to whether she pos-
sessed words in her three languages to name and talk about the same toys and books.
While it is impossible to claim, with certainty, that a specific lexical item (say Tagalog
aso, ‘dog’) was, for the child, truly synonymous with its cross-language synonyms (dog
and perro), the fact that Kathryn used all three terms to refer to the same stuffed dog
provides evidence for the existence of cross-language synonymy in the child’s early
lexical productions.
As in Pearson et al. (1995), the percentage of TEs at each month was only calculated
over potential TEs. For instance, not all lexical types had equivalents in one or both lan-
guages (for example high five), and items common to all three languages (okay/okay/
okay) could not have cross-language synonyms. Also following Pearson et al. (1995),
neutrals, i.e., words common to or ambiguous between two or three languages, were
only given a single count in the calculation of the cumulative vocabulary (e.g., the
Tagalog/Spanish neutral item mansanas/manzana(s), ‘apple,’ was counted as one word
110 First Language 30(1)

90

80

70
Number of words
60

50

40

30

20

10

0
1;4 1;5 1;6 1;7 1;8 1;9 1;10 1;11 2;0
Age
Neutrals English Tagalog Spanish

Figure 1.  Kathryn’s Number of Tagalog, Spanish, English, and Neutral Words between 1;4 and 2;0

even if the child appropriately produced this form when interacting both with Tagalog
and Spanish speakers). However, notice that, unlike Pearson et al. (1995), neutral words
that did not have a phonetically distinct cross-language synonym were not counted as
words with TEs (as in Deuchar & Quay, 2000). One of the goals of this study was indeed
to assess how many phonetically distinct pairs and triplets were represented in the child’s
cumulative lexicon, and thus the use of a neutral term could not be taken as evidence that
she had two labels for the same referent.

Results and Discussion

Kathryn’s Lexical Development
Figure 1 shows Kathryn’s acquisition of Tagalog, Spanish, English, and neutral words
between ages 1;4 and 2;0. The child’s first words appeared around or slightly before the
beginning of this study, and by age 2, Kathryn had a total productive vocabulary of 297
unique words. Of this vocabulary, 22.9% (68 words) were Tagalog lexical items, 28.3%
(84 words) were English, 20.9% (62 words) were Spanish, and 27.9% (83 words) were
neutrals. Most neutrals were words common to two or three languages (i.e., asul/azul,
‘blue,’ bye/bye, or okay/okay/okay), whereas a few items had an ambiguous language
source because of the child’s immature pronunciation (i.e., no/no or mommy/mami/
mommy). Neutrals were thus a large part of the child’s vocabulary, making up between
one-third and one-fourth of her cumulative lexicon during the period of study. These
results are in line with Schelleter’s (2002) finding that words that are identical or similar
in a child’s two languages are acquired early and used frequently in the early stages of
bilingual vocabulary development. In her study, Schelleter (2002) tracked the number of
identical, similar, and dissimilar nouns produced by a German–English bilingual child
Montanari 111

Table 2. Types of neutrals produced by Kathryn between 1;4 and 2;0.

Age 1;4 1;5 1;6 1;7 1;8 1;9 1;10 1;11 2;0
Tag/Span   3   6   7 19 21 37 39 46 50 (60.2%)
Tag/Eng   0   3   4  4  4  8 13 16 17 (20.5%)
Span/Eng   0   0   0  0  0  0  1  1   1 (1.2%)
Tag/Span/Eng   4   6   6  7  7 10 12 12 15 (18.1%)

Total   7  15 17 30 32 55 65 75 83 (100%)

between 1;11 and 2;9, and found that identical and similar nouns made up 46% of the
child’s total noun vocabulary and 54% of all tokens across all sessions. These results
seem to suggest that multilingual children might be ‘biased’ to acquire and use highly
similar words early on in development: these ‘all-language’ words would indeed allow
them to interact in multiple languages by making the least effort. A similar argument has
been made for adult bilinguals in language contact situations, who have been found to
develop parallel ‘simplification’ and ‘overgeneralization’ strategies aimed at lightening
the cognitive load of having to remember and use two different linguistic systems (Silva-
Corvalán, 1994).
Table 2 displays the number of Tagalog/Spanish, Tagalog/English, English/Spanish,
and Tagalog/Spanish/English neutrals at each monthly interval. As can be seen, items
common to Tagalog and Spanish were the most represented category at all ages, mak-
ing up 60.2% (50 words) of all neutrals at age 2;0. Words shared by Tagalog and
English (20.5%) and by all three languages (18.1%) were less frequent, each category
representing about one-fifth of all neutrals. Interestingly, all but one neutral included a
Tagalog word, a finding that suggests that Kathryn’s acquisition of neutrals was per-
haps linked to vocabulary development in Tagalog. Recall that during the period of
study, Kathryn was primarily taken care of by her Tagalog-speaking grandparents.
Tagalog was also her mother’s language. Tagalog was thus the language that the child
heard the most and in which it could be assumed she was developing the largest vocab-
ulary. The fact that Tagalog/Spanish items were three times as frequent as Tagalog/
English words in the child’s vocabulary seems to support this hypothesis: the Tagalog
lexicon displays exactly the same proportion of Spanish (30%) to English loanwords
(10%) (Rau, 1992).
Turning to the question as to whether Kathryn was learning words at the same rate as
monolinguals and bilinguals, Figure 2 shows her cumulative and conceptual vocabulary
between 1;4 and 2;0 with respect to the 60 monolingual and bilingual children studied by
Pearson, Fernández, and Oller (1993). The cumulative vocabulary includes all the
Tagalog, Spanish, English, and neutral words that Kathryn knew at each monthly inter-
val. The conceptual vocabulary measures conceptual knowledge, and hence counts TEs
only once. Both counts are given because they are both common measures of multilin-
gual children’s overall vocabulary and can be used to compare lexical knowledge
between multilinguals and monolinguals (Patterson & Pearson, 2004).
112 First Language 30(1)

300

250
Number of words
200

150

100

50

0
1;4 1;5 1;6 1;7 1;8 1;9 1;10 1;11 2;0 2;1

Kathryn Cumulative Kathryn Conceptual

Bilinguals Cumulative Monolinguals

Figure 2.  Kathryn’s Cumulative and Conceptual Vocabulary between 1;4 and 2;0 with Respect
to the Monolingual and Bilingual Children Studied by Pearson et al. (1993)

Table 3.  Kathryn’s Cumulative Vocabulary and the Number of Words with Translation
Equivalents from age 1;4 to 2;0

Age Total Total Words Total Words % Words with

Words with Possible TEs with TEs TEs

1;4   15   12    0
1;5   39   34    4 11.8
1;6   45   40    6 15.0
1;7   70   64   17 26.6
1;8   82   76   23 30.3
1;9 151 142   50 35.2
1;10 202 191   70 36.6
1;11 251 239   95 39.7
2;0 297 280 118 42.1

Despite the limitations of comparing one child to several children whose vocabulary
scores were averaged out, the results indicate that Kathryn’s overall lexical development
was fairly comparable to the bilinguals’ and monolinguals’. In the early months of word
learning, the child, similarly to the bilingual group, was acquiring vocabulary at a slower
pace than the monolinguals. However, around 1;8 she seemed to experience a word
spurt that led her to catch up with and even surpass the monolingual children. This was
Montanari 113

350

300

250
Number of words
200

150

100

50

0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Age
KAT - total words KAT - words with TEs
M - total words M - words with TEs

KAT 1 = 1;4  9 = 2;0   M 1= 1;2  9 = 1;10

Figure 3.  Kathryn’s and M’s Development of New Words and Words with Translation
Equivalents between 1;4 and 2;0 (Kathryn) and 1;2 and 1;10 (M) (M’s data from Deuchar &
Quay, 2000)

especially true when her cumulative vocabulary was taken into account. As a matter
of fact, at age 1;11 she knew a total of 251 words, whereas the mean number of words
known by the bilinguals and monolinguals was 168 and 155 respectively. Although this
apparent advantage might be attributed to the child’s exposure to and need to develop
three lexicons, one must be cautious in drawing conclusions. First, Pearson et al. (1993)
report large standard deviations for their subjects, suggesting that there is much variabil-
ity in the number of words that children know at these ages. Second, the number of words
in Kathryn’s conceptual vocabulary was more in line with the means for the other groups,
indicating that her conceptual knowledge was certainly within the range of monolingual
and bilingual peers.

The Production of Equivalents

Table 3 shows Kathryn’s cumulative vocabulary at each monthly interval as well as the
growth rate of words with possible and actual TEs.
Similarly to the bilingual children in other studies, only a proportion of Kathryn’s
words had cross-language synonyms during her first two years of life. However, despite
the large number of neutrals in Kathryn’s vocabulary, TEs were identified from early on
and their percentage increased with the gradual increase of new words. For instance, at
age 1;5 Kathryn had a cumulative vocabulary of 39 words and 11.8% of such words had
cross-language synonyms. By age 2;0, her cumulative vocabulary reached 297 words
and the percentage of words with TEs increased to 42.1. The number of TEs more than
doubled after 1;8 and then became stable with about 23 new doublets or triplets formed
each month thereafter.
114 First Language 30(1)

Figure 3 shows Kathryn’s development of new words and words with TEs between
1;4 and 2;0 with respect to M, the Spanish–English bilingual child studied by Deuchar
and Quay (2000). Although M was 2 months ‘ahead’ of Kathryn in terms of lexical
development (at point 1, Kathryn was 1;4 and M was 1;2), Kathryn acquired new words
and new TEs at a strikingly comparable rate to M.
Recall that Deuchar and Quay (2000) reported an average of 33% of words with
TEs in M’s lexicon over 12 months of study, and 27% of these items in her first 50
words. Similarly, Pearson et al. (1995) found that the average percentage of doublets
was 30.8 at all observations, and other studies observed comparable frequencies of
cross-language synonyms both at early (Holowka et al., 2002) and at later stages
(Lanvers, 1999) of vocabulary development. Despite the fact that the child in this
study was acquiring three and not two languages, she was found to produce on aver-
age, between age 1;4 and 2;0, 26.4% of words with cross-language synonyms, and the
percentage of doublets and triplets in her first 50 words was 28. Although no equiva-
lents were found among the first 15 lexical items she produced, six of these words
(42.8%) were actually items common to two or three of the child’s languages, with a
function that was overall the same as that of TEs. It is clear, then, that Kathryn was
learning TEs from early on in development and she was doing so at the same rate as
bilinguals.
Table 4 presents the 54 sets of doublets and triplets produced by Kathryn by age 2;0.
The time interval between the appearance of a word, its first TE, and its second TE is also
given.
A first look at the table reveals that the time interval for the formation of equivalents
decreased with increasing age. For instance, one of Kathryn’s first Spanish words luna
(‘moon’) did not have a TE until more than 7 months later; however, the last equivalent
pair frío and maginaw (‘cold’) were recorded within a 10-day period. Similarly, the pair
agua and water appeared, approximately, within a 6.5-month interval, while the more
recent doublet salta and talon (‘jump’) were produced only within 16 days. A closer look
at Kathryn’s first and last pairs of TEs (shown in Table 5) indicates, however, that the
average time interval for the formation of cross-language synonyms did not decrease
with age. For instance, while the first seven pairs of TEs were acquired within an average
of 41 days, her last seven pairs of equivalent doublets appeared within an average of 84
days. This finding further disconfirms the hypothesis that TEs are avoided or acquired
with delay in the earliest stages of vocabulary acquisition.
Notice the nature of these early equivalents. Kathryn had cross-language synonyms to
refer to herself (beybi/baby, and guagua), and to denote her father (papa and daddy), an
important person in her life; she had different labels to refer to her favorite toys (bola and
ball, airplane*/airplane, and avión) and she could say goodbye in English, Tagalog, and
Spanish (bye bye/bye bye, and chao). Interestingly, the doublets bye bye and chao, papa
and daddy, bola and ball, and susi and llaves, ‘keys,’ were also among the first 10 active
TEs produced by the Portuguese–English bilingual child studied by Nicoladis and Secco
(2000), and the first three of these pairs were also reported for the child in Deuchar and
Quay’s (2000) study. These results indicate that early vocabularies are strikingly overlap-
ping in meaning, irrespective not only of the language(s) being acquired (Clark, 1995)
but also of the number of these languages.
Montanari 115

Table 4.  List of Doublets and Triplets Produced by Kathryn between 1;4 and 2;0

Word Age TE1 Age Time TE2 Age Time Time

Interval Int1 Int2

papa 1;4.02 daddy 1;5.19 1.17

gatas 1;4.02 leche 1;7.14 3.12 bottlea 1;7.18 3.16 0.04
luz 1;4.05 ilaw 1;8.24 4.19 light 1;10.26 6.21 2.02
auto 1;4.10 kotse 1;9.23 5.13
agua 1;4.13 tubig 1;11.01 6.18
luna 1;4.13 moon 1;11.24 7.11 buwan 2;0.18 8.05 0.24
no 1;4.20 not 1;10.12 5.22
saging 1;4.24 banana/ 1;10.26 6.02 N/A
banana
(bye) bye/ 1;5.08 chao 1;7.03 1.25 N/A
(bye) bye
bolab 1;5.09 ball 1;7.10 2.01 pelota 1;9.23 4.14 2.13
puno 1;5.09 arbol 1;6.23 1.14
upo 1;5.09 sit 1;9.27 4.18
susi 1;5.19 llaves 1;5.19 0.00
beybi baby 1;5.19 guagua 1;7.14 1.25 N/A
this 1;5.19 este 1;8.02 2.13 ito 1;10.23 5.04 2.21
nasira (sira) 1;5.19 broken 2;0.28 7.09
isda 1;6.23 fish 1;9.23 3.00
airplane*/ 1;6.23 avión 1;7.18 0.25 N/A
airplane
niña 1;7.03 bata 1;11.01 3.28
(pick me) 1;7.18 upa*/upac 1;9.09 1.21 N/A
up
up 1;7.18 arriba 1;9.09 1.21 taas 1;9.23 2.05 0.14
mansanas/ 1;7.18 apple 2;0.14 4.26 N/A
manzana(s)
mano 1;7.24 kamay 1;8.24 1.00
masd/más 1;7.26 more 2;0.00 4.04 N/A
allá 1;8.06 over 1;10.26 2.20
there
sun 1;8.16 sol 1;9.02 0.16
casa 1;8.24 bahay 2;0.07 3.13
vamos 1;8.28 (alis na) 1;9.09 0.11
tayo
pen 1;9.02 lapis/lápiz 1;9.23 0.21 N/A
mira 1;9.09 look 1;9.23 0.14
mira 1;9.09 watch 1;11.24 2.15
lobo/globo 1;9.09 balloon 2;0.14 3.05 N/A
116 First Language 30(1)

Table 4.  Continued

Word Age TE1 Age Time TE2 Age Time Time

Interval Int1 Int2

sala/sala 1;9.09 den 1;11.01 1.22 N/A

rojo 1;9.16 red 1;9.30 0.14 pula 1;10.05 0.19 0.05
yes*/yes 1;9.16 sí 1;11.03 1.17 N/A
alisin 1;9.16 open 1;10.10 0.24
asul/azul 1;9.16 blue 2;0.14 2.28 N/A
libro/libro 1;9.23 book 1;9.30 0.07 N/A
that 1;9.23 ese (eso) 1;9.30 0.07 iyan 1;9.30 0.07 0.00
aso 1;9.23 perro 1;10.04 0.11 dog 1;10.26 1.03 0.22
big 1;9.30 grande 1;10.01 0.01
too 1;9.30 también 1;11.19 1.19
estrella*/ 1;10.01 star 1;10.26 0.25 N/A
estrella
está 1;10.05 it’s/is 1;11.01 0.26 N/Ae
run 1;10.05 takbo 2;0.18 2.13
what 1;10.09 ¿qué pasa?f 1;11.01 0.22
happen(ed)?
ahí 1;10.12 there 2;0.14 2.02
mama 1;10.23 hombre 1;10.23 0.00
yummy 1;10.26 masarap 2;0.28 2.02
linda 1;11.01 cute 1;11.03 0.02 maganda 1;11.17 0.16 0.14
name 1;11.01 nombre 1;11.03 0.02
to 1;11.01 kay 2;0.25 1.24
salta 1;11.08 talon 1;11.24 0.16
frío 1;11.20 maginaw 2;0.00 0.10
TE1 = First equivalent.
TE2 = Second equivalent.
Time Int1 = Time interval between the appearance of the word and its second equivalent (TE2).
Time Int2 = Time interval between the appearance of the first (TE1) and second equivalent (TE2).
N/A = TE2 is not phonetically distinct from the word or TE1.
* Words categorized as Tagalog lexical items because Kathryn’s mother used them in her speech and did not
have/use their corresponding Tagalog equivalent.
a
Kathryn used the term bottle to refer to her bottle of milk, and she used this term interchangeably with
gatas and leche.
b
Although bola is also a word in some Spanish varieties, the Spanish-speaking adults interacting with Kathryn
did not know this word and consistently used the term pelota for ‘ball.’
c
Upa*/upa was used both by the Tagalog- and Spanish-speaking adults to mean ‘be picked up’ in sentences
such as gusto mong upa? or ¿quieres upa?, literally, ‘do you want up?,’ i.e., ‘do you want to be picked up?’
d
In Tagalog, mas is only used in certain comparative constructions. However, Kathryn’s mother employed
mas as an adverb in contexts such as gusto mo mas? (‘do you want more?’), analogously to the use of más in
Spanish and more in English.
e
The copula is not expressed in Tagalog.
f
Although qué pasa is in the present tense and what happen(ed) appeared to be in the past, both
expressions were used by the adults and by Kathryn in similar contexts. For example, the adults employed
such expressions when Kathryn fell and was crying, and Kathryn resorted to them after something
happened.
Montanari 117

Table 5.  Kathryn’s First and Last Seven Pairs of Translation Equivalents between 1;4 and 2;0 and
Time Interval between the Appearance of a Word and its First Equivalent

Word Age TE1 Age Time Interval

  1.  papa 1;4.02 daddy 1;5.19 1.17
  2.  susi 1;5.19 llaves (‘keys’) 1;5.19 0
  3.  puno 1;5.09 arbol (‘tree’) 1;6.23 1.14
  4. airplane*/airplane 1;6.23 avión 1;7.18 0.25
  5. (bye) bye/(bye) bye 1;5.08 chao 1;7.03 1.25
  6.  bola 1;5.09 ball 1;7.10 2.01
  7.  beybi/baby 1;5.19 guagua 1;7.14 1.25
AVERAGE Time Interval 1.11
48.  nasira (sira) 1;5.19 broken 2;0.28 7.09
49.  lobo/globo 1;9.09 balloon 2;0.14 3.05
50.  run 1;10.05 takbo 2;0.18 2.13
51.  ahí 1;10.12 there 2;0.14 2.02
52.  yummy 1;10.26 masarap 2;0.28 2.02
53.  to 1;11.01 kay 2;0.25 1.24
54.  moon 1;11.24 buwan 2;0.18 0.24
AVERAGE Time Interval 2.24
* Words categorized as Tagalog lexical items because Kathryn’s mother used them in her speech and did not
have/use their corresponding Tagalog equivalent.

Similarly to the children in Deuchar and Quay’s (2000) and Nicoladis and Secco’s
(2000) investigations, Kathryn also produced, among her first words, the neutral term
mommy/mommy/mami, but she was not credited with this equivalent because its language
source was ambiguous. If such neutral words were counted as TEs, however, as Pearson et
al. (1995) and Holowka et al. (2002) did in their studies, the child would be found to pro-
duce six cross-language synonyms within her first 15 words (42.8%), as shown in Table 6.1
In sum, it is clear that equivalent terms, be they in the form of neutrals or of phoneti-
cally distinct TEs, were acquired and fully exploited by Kathryn from early on, similarly
to and at the same rate as bilinguals. Even when neutrals were discarded as potential
cross-language synonyms, Kathryn was found to learn and employ a considerable pro-
portion of equivalent items, and despite the absence of cross-language synonyms in her
first 15 words, almost one-third of her first 50-word vocabulary consisted of different
labels for the same object, event or process. If the 20–25% rate of TEs proposed by
Genesee and Nicoladis (2006) is taken as evidence for lexical differentiation, it can then
be argued that, starting from at least 1;6, the child was building separate lexicons.
An analysis of the extent to which TEs appeared in the appropriate language context
between 1;5 and 1;9 supports this hypothesis. As shown in Table 7, TEs were used
indiscriminately with adult interlocutors at age 1;5; yet, starting from 1;6, TEs were
increasingly produced in the appropriate language context, and they matched the lan-
guage of Kathryn’s addressees at a rate of 70% or higher.
118 First Language 30(1)

Table 6.  Kathryn’s first six neutral translation equivalents

Word Pronunciation Age English Translation

mommy/mommy/mami ['mami] 1;4.01 mommy

papel/papel ['papI] [pa'pe] 1;4.03 paper
a
pipi/peepee/pipi ['pipi] 1;4.07
pupu/poopoo/pupu ['pupu] 1;4.07
no*/no/no ['nu] ['no] 1;4.11 no
relo/reloj [je'o] [je'lo] 1;4.12 watch
* Words categorized as Tagalog lexical items because Kathryn’s mother used them in her speech and did not
have/use their corresponding Tagalog equivalent.
a
Although the Spanish dictionary entry for peepee and poopoo is pipí and pupú or popó, in which stress is
placed on the last syllable, Kathryn’s father and grandmother were often observed stressing the first syllable
of these forms, as in the Tagalog item.

Table 7.  Percentage of Translation Equivalents that Matched the Language of the Addressee
between 1;5 and 1;9 (number of TEs in parentheses)
Age
1;5 1;6 1;7 1;8 1;9

% Language matches 25.0 (4) 66.7 (6) 73 (17) 80 (23) 71.2 (50)

Although this analysis is limited to the first three occurrences of each equivalent
as indicated in the reconstructed vocabulary, and hence does not capture the overall
frequency with which TEs were used in each language context (as Montanari, 2009a,
does), these results are important since they show that the child could not only make
appropriate language choices at age 1;10 (as shown in Montanari, 2009a), but she
could also use equivalents with different language users at an earlier age. Taken
together, these findings seem to provide robust evidence for lexical differentiation, at
least from age 1;6.

Doublets or Triplets?
Table 8 shows the number and types of doublets and triplets produced by Kathryn
between 1;4 and 2;0. As can be seen, phonetically distinct doublets abounded but non-
neutral triplets were rare. As a matter of fact, the first such triplet, gatas, leche, and bottle
(‘bottle of milk’), did not appear until 1;7, and by age 2;0 Kathryn had only acquired 10
phonetically distinct triplets.
Although triplets consisting of three different words were few, neutral triplets were
not. As shown in Table 8, by the end of the study there were 15 triplets made up of a
single word (okay/okay/okay), and, most importantly, there were as many neutral triplets
Montanari 119

Table 8.  Number of Neutral and Phonetically Distinct Doublets and Triplets Produced by
Kathryn between 1;4 and 2;0

Age

1;4 1;5 1;6 1;7 1;8 1;9 1;10 1;11 2;0

Doublets
   Phonetically 0  2  3  7 10 19 23 34 44 (39.3%)
   distinct
   Neutral 3  9 11 23 25 45 53 63 68 (60.7%)
  Total 3 11 14 30 35 64 76 97 112 (100%)
Triplets
   Phonetically 0  0  0  1  1  4  8  9 10 (25.0%)
   distinct
   Neutral – 2 0  0  0  3  3  6  8 11 15 (37.5%)
   words
   Neutral – 1 4  6  6  7  7 10 12 12 15 (37.5%)
   word
  Total 4  6  6 11 11 20 28 32 40 (100%)
Note: Triplets are only counted as triplets and are not included in the doublet count.

consisting of two different words (beybi/guagua/baby or lapis/lápiz/pen). If such neu-

trals were counted as triplets, as Pearson et al. (1995) and Holowka et al. (2002) did in
their studies, Kathryn would be found to produce four triplets in the first month of word
learning and 40 triplets by the end of the study. Therefore, the limited number of pho-
netically distinct triplets in Kathryn’s early vocabulary should not be taken as evidence
against tri-lexical differentiation. Rather, triplets did not appear as early as doublets
because of their nature (in order to have a triplet one must first learn a doublet), and
because of the degree of cognation among the child’s languages.
In addition, recall that Tagalog was the language that the child heard the most during
the period of study, and in which, if neutrals were counted, she had the largest vocabu-
lary. It is thus possible that limited exposure to Spanish and English resulted in lower
vocabulary learning in those languages, and as a consequence, in a lower percentage of
triplets. An analysis of the languages of Kathryn’s first equivalents confirms this
hypothesis: her first doublets involved either Tagalog and Spanish lexical items (e.g.,
susi and llaves, ‘keys’), or Tagalog and English words (e.g., papa and daddy), but no
Spanish/English combination was found until the appearance of the first triplet at 1;7.18
(see also Table 5 for evidence that the majority of equivalents involved Tagalog words).
It appears, then, that Kathryn’s strategy for building a multilingual lexicon consisted,
early on, of acquiring an item from her dominant language, Tagalog, and an item from
one of her weaker languages, Spanish or English. This is important since it suggests that
the multilingual child, faced with the challenge of developing multiple vocabularies,
might not only prefer words that can function in all languages (i.e., neutrals), as previously
120 First Language 30(1)

shown, but also equivalents that allow her foremost to interact in the language(s)
that she uses most often. Other studies have shown that equivalent learning is indeed
correlated to the amount of input the child hears in each language (Lanvers, 1999;
Pearson et al., 1995). In Lanvers’ study (1999), changes in the input in favor of the
weaker language were identified as conditions that enhanced equivalent learning.
Similarly, in Pearson et al.’s (1995) study, unbalanced exposure patterns resulted in
lower doublet percentages. As the authors point out, we cannot expect children who are
‘not hearing enough of the second language to provide an adequate test of the doublet
rejection hypothesis’ because ‘language balance can dramatically affect the magnitude
of the doublet percentages’ (p. 361), and, in the case of the child in this study, of the
triplet percentages.
Notice that despite restricted Spanish and English input, the number of triplets
increased significantly between 1;8 and 1;9 and it continued to grow in the following
months. This means that the large proportion of doublets did not prevent triplets from
growing; rather, doublets paved the way for the child’s acquisition of three equivalent
terms. While the average time interval between the appearance of a word and its first
equivalent during the entire period of study was indeed 66 days, it took only 30 days,
on average, for the child to acquire a second equivalent, hence to form a triplet. This
is important since it suggests that once the child learns a first equivalent for an exist-
ing word, then the process of learning yet another label to refer to the same word is
facilitated. Lanvers (1999) attributes the apparent ease in equivalent learning to the
fact that the child only needs to map a new form onto an already-familiar concept, old
and new forms being contrasted as belonging to different languages. It is possible that
a similar ‘lexical bootstrapping’ strategy applies when learning second equivalents: in
this case, not only is a concept already familiar to the child but the process of learning
equivalents is a familiar experience. Thus, the initial differentiation of the lexicon
as evidenced by doublets would facilitate the emergence of three lexical systems,
in a way that has parallels in the ease with which bilingual speakers have been
documented to learn a third language (see Cenoz, 2003, for a review). Clearly, this
hypothesis deserves to be tested with a larger number of children learning languages
with different degrees of cognation, and with data that go beyond diary notes and
spontaneous speech samples.

Summary and Conclusion

One of the goals of the present analysis was to examine whether multilingual-to-be
children build separate lexical systems for their languages from early on or rather start
out with a single lexicon comprised of words from all their languages. This question is
important because it carries implicit assumptions about children’s ability to acquire
multiple languages. The proposal that young multilinguals’ initial lexical knowledge is
fused does indeed imply that such children are not really using different languages until
later on, an idea that is clearly in line with the public perception of language delay in
young bilinguals (Petitto et al., 2001). On the other hand, separate lexical systems pro-
vide evidence that multilingual development proceeds along separate lines for each
language in a way that does not differ substantially from monolingual development.
Montanari 121

Overall, the child in this study does not provide support for the claim of an initially undif-
ferentiated lexicon as advanced by the proponents of the Unitary Language System hypoth-
esis. Equivalent terms, be they in the form of neutrals or of phonetically distinct TEs, were
indeed acquired and fully exploited by the child from early on in development. Even when
neutrals were discarded as potential cross-language synonyms, Kathryn learned and
employed a considerable proportion of equivalent items, especially starting from age 1;6.
Starting from the same age, TEs were also increasingly produced in the appropriate lan-
guage context. Although triplets and Spanish/English equivalent pairs did not appear until
the child was 1;7.18, factors such as the degree of cognation among her languages and expo-
sure patterns seemed to come into play. First, many doublets were neutral triplets consisting
of a neutral/equivalent pair combination. Second, Kathryn was consistently more exposed
to Tagalog than Spanish and English, and Tagalog also appeared to be her dominant lan-
guage. It seems thus natural that, at least initially, her equivalents involved an item from her
stronger language and an item from one of her weaker languages. Input determined the
number and types of equivalents that the child was acquiring. Taken together, these results
provide robust evidence that the child was not rejecting synonymy but rather was differen-
tiating her languages lexically from the early stages of vocabulary development.
Interestingly, TEs were acquired as early and at the same rate as in bilinguals. Kathryn
produced, for instance, cross-language synonyms from her very first words, and, during
the period of study, over one-fourth of her vocabulary had TEs, similarly to the bilingual
children involved in other studies. In other words, triple language exposure – and hence
the necessity to express the same concept in three languages – did not result in higher
equivalent learning. The striking similarity between Kathryn’s production of equivalents
and the patterns found among bilinguals suggests that the development of the multilin-
gual lexicon might be based on a similar cognitive underpinning and be governed by the
same constraints irrespective of the number of languages being acquired – be these con-
straints limits on memory, on perceptual categorization, or perhaps on motor program-
ming and control of the vocal tract.
Unlike for bilingual children, however, doublets paved the way for the acquisition of
triplets. Forming a triplet (i.e., learning a second equivalent) indeed took the child half
the time than forming a doublet, a result that appeared to support Lanvers’ (1999) ‘bilin-
gual lexical bootstrapping’ hypothesis, i.e., the idea that equivalent learning is facilitated
by the child’s previous experience with a concept. In this case, the process of triplet for-
mation was aided by the child’s familiarity not only with a concept but also with the
experience of learning equivalents. It is thus possible that in trilingual development the
initial differentiation of the lexicon as evidenced by doublets facilitates the emergence of
three lexical systems, similarly to the way bilinguals use their knowledge of two lan-
guages to learn a third language (Cenoz, 2003).
Current hypotheses are especially promising as far as revealing the possible mecha-
nisms upon which the capacities for language differentiation – and for lexical differentia-
tion in particular – could be built (Genesee, 2003; Petitto et al., 2001). Investigators
working with pre- and post-natal infants have found that children come to the world
equipped with the perceptual and memory capacities that are necessary for multilingual
acquisition – the ability to capture the specific temporal patterns and distributional
regularities present in the linguistic input, be it single or multiple (Petitto & Marentette,
122 First Language 30(1)

1991; Saffran, Aslin, & Newport, 1996), and the capacity to remember such information
(DeCasper & Fifer, 1980; Mehler et al., 1988). Current evidence also suggests that infants
exploit these capacities from very early on in development, if not in the womb (DeCasper
& Spence, 1986). These abilities might provide the multilingual-to-be child with the means
to detect the various related but different linguistic patterns of the input languages, and this
could in turn serve as the basis upon which multiple representations are built (Petitto et al.,
2001). It is also hypothesized that these ‘detection processes’ develop and strengthen in the
early months of language exposure, and that by 12 months of age (or the first word produc-
tion), children have ‘rudimentary knowledge of the phonetic inventory and combinatorial
regularities’ of the input languages as well as of ‘the probabilistic word order and word
groupings’ in each of their languages (Petitto et al., 2001, p. 492). In other words, by the
end of their first year, infants raised in multilingual environments would not only discrimi-
nate their native languages but they would also ‘begin to treat their languages,’ in produc-
tion, ‘in systematically different ways’ (Poulin-Dubois & Goodz, 2001, p. 97).
The results of this and previous studies portray a child who treated her languages ‘in
systematically different ways’ from early on by learning cross-language equivalents, by
differentiating her languages pragmatically (Montanari, 2009a), and by combining her words
following language-specific patterns (Montanari, 2009b). Much remains to be done, how-
ever, to fully understand the process of language differentiation in early trilingual develop-
ment. First, will all children show such early signs of languages differentiation? Clearly, the
results obtained from studying one child, although informative, cannot be generalized to all
trilingual children. It is important that large-scale and also experimental studies begin
to address this issue. Second, to what extent does input determine the degree of language
differentiation? Kathryn had sufficient exposure to each language to learn language-
specific words and structures and make appropriate language choices. She also heard her
languages serially, with minimal or no code-switching between or within utterances. It is
possible that low levels of trilingual exposure and/or mixed input might delay the process
of differentiation (recall that the child in Quay’s [2001] study developed an active knowl-
edge of only one language despite hearing three). Finally, will children learning non-
cognate languages show earlier signs of differentiation than the child in this study? Kathryn
learned as many TEs as bilinguals and she did not acquire a triplet until 1;7. This was in part
due to the degree of cognation among her languages. It is not unlikely that children learning
languages with no or less lexical overlap might show higher equivalent learning and earlier
triplet production. In sum, many questions remain when it comes to explaining language
differentiation in early trilingual development. I believe that this case study has shed some
light on this process as well as having provided directions for future investigations of early
trilingual acquisition. Given the large number of children growing up with multiple
languages, it is imperative that more research be devoted to this issue and that theories of
language development incorporate findings from multilingual acquisition studies.

Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Kathryn and to her family who not only allowed me to enter into their private
lives and thus undertake this investigation but also helped with the data collection and tran-
scription. I also thank the members of my dissertation committee, Elaine Andersen, Dany Bird, Jo
Montanari 123

Ann Farver, Toby Mintz, and especially Carmen Silva-Corvalán, for their helpful comments and
suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

Note
1 In adult speech, the language of these items can be identified on the basis of subtle phonetic
contrasts. However, because of the child’s immature pronunciation at early stages, they were
classified as neutrals during the period of study.

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