Deuchar & Quay's Bilingual acquisition addresses
theoretical issues both of language acquisition in general and of
specifically bilingual acquisition through an examination of a case
study involving one child's acquisition of English and Spanish in
England. Regarding the first issue, the authors attempt to answer
questions of phonological differentiation based on acoustic evidence,
lexical differentiation in relation to the idea that children avoid
lexical synonymy in early stages of language acquisition, and lexical
categorization of two-word utterances and the emergence of language
choices. Regarding the second issue, they are concerned with the
question of whether children possess one or two language systems, and
they explore the criteria involved in making such a distinction.
Finally, they investigate the factors of the language situation that
influence a child's language choice.