Influences of bilingualism on metalinguistic development

The relationship between metalinguistic awareness and bilingualism is interpreted in terms of a framework which defines metalinguistic awareness as consisting of two processing components: analysis of linguistic knowledge, and control of linguistic processes. It is argued that bilingualism enhances only the latter of these processing components, so global assessments of metalinguistic ability by bilingual subjects are bound to lead to inconsistent results. Some studies are reported in which these two processing components are separated. Bilingual children are shown to be superior to monolingual children on measures of control of linguistic processes.