A review on the theories of bilingual development

Abstract

This paper aims to verify whether a theory which describes and explains in an elegant way the phenomenon of bilingualism exists. In order to do it, we present different definitions of bilingualism and its different types. After presenting these concepts, we show the theories which try to explain how the bilingual brain may represent all languages known by bilinguals. We concluded that the Subsystem Theory Hypothesis better explains how languages are stored in the bilingual brain, because this theory explains some cases that the others do not. This paper demonstrates the evolution of the most important theories involved in bilingualism and can be used as a starting point for a further project.