How do children develop bilingual competence‎?‎ Do bilingual children develop language in the same way as monolinguals‎?‎ Set in the context of findings on language development‎,‎ this book examines the acquisition of English and Spanish by two brothers in the first six years of their lives‎.‎ Based on in‎-depth and meticulous analyses of naturalistic data‎,‎ it explores how the systems of both languages affect each other as the children develop‎,‎ and how different levels of exposure to each language influence the nature of acquisition‎.‎ The author demonstrates that the children‎'‎s grammars and lexicons follow a developmental path similar to that of monolinguals‎,‎ but that cross‎-linguistic interactions affecting lexical‎,‎ semantic and discourse‎-pragmatic aspects arise in Spanish when exposure to it diminishes around the age of four‎.‎ The first of its kind‎,‎ this original study is a must‎-read for students and researchers in bilingualism‎,‎ child development‎,‎ language acquisition and language contact‎.‎