1. PSY 369: Psycholinguistics
Bilingualism

2. Bilinguals & Polyglots
Many people speak more than one language
Tucker (1999) - multilinguals outnumber monolinguals
What is the impact of knowing/using more than one language?
Factors affecting second language acquisition
What does the bilingual lexicon look like?
Interesting effects in bilinguals
Interference
Code switching
Cognitive advantages

3. Second language learning
Learning a new language
What if we already know one language, but want to learn another?
Johnson and Newport (1989)
Native Chinese/Korean speakers moving to US
Task: Listen to sentences and judge whether grammatically correct
Concluded that around the age of 16 something happens
Different factors operate on language acquisition before and after the age of 16

4. Second language learning
Learning a new language
What if we already know one language, but want to learn another?
Adults learning another language typically have a persistent foreign accent – perhaps a critical period for phonology (Flege & Hillenbrand, 1984)
Adults typically do better initially at learning a new language compared to kids, but kids typically do better over the long term (Krashen, Long, & Scarcella, 1982)

5. Important factors Contexts of childhood bilingualism Simultaneous
Both languages are acquired at the same time
Vocabulary growth of bilinguals is similar to that of monolinguals
Some aspects of acquisition may be slowed, but by age of 4 typically caught up
Doesn’t seem to matter whether languages are “related” or not (e.g., English - French versus English Japanese)
Can achieve “fluency” in both languages
Sequential acquisition
The second language is learned after a first language
When the second language (L2) is acquired is important
Early versus late learning (e.g., see the Johnson and Newport study)

6. Important factors Mode of acquisition
Native bilingualism - growing up in a two language environment
Immersion - schooling provided in a non-native language
Submersion - one learner surrounded by non-native speakers (e.g., English speaker moving to another country)
Frequency of usage of both languages
How often and in what contexts do you use the two languages
“Use it or lose it” - language attrition
Language dominance effects
Relative fluency of L1 and L2 may impact processing

7. Main Theoretical Questions
How do we represent linguistic information in a bilingual lexicon?
How do we process (comprehend and produce) language when we know more than one?

8. Models of the bilingual lexicons
Potter et al (1984): Separate Stores Models – separate lexicons for each language – could be constructed 2 ways L1 L2
CONCEPTS
Word Association Model L1 L2
CONCEPTS
Concept Mediation Model
Evidence for separate storage:
“dog” primes “dog”
better than
“hund” primes “dog”
Evidence most consistent with Concept mediation model:
mostly from picture and word naming, and translation studies
In L1 picture naming slower than word naming. In L2 pictures named about the same time as L1 translated into L2
hund
hund
dog
dog
German
German
English
English

9. Models of the bilingual lexicons
Paivio, Clark, & Lambert (1988): Common Stores Models – words from both languages in same store
L1 & L2
CONCEPTS
Evidence:
“hund” does prime “dog”
And
“dog” primes “hund”
hund
English &
dog
German

10. Models of the bilingual lexicons
The results are mixed, supporting more complex models L1 L2
concepts
lexical
links
conceptual
Revised Hierachical Model
(Kroll & Stewart, 1994)
Proposed that the fluency of L2 needs to be considered in the processing model
Evidence: translation tasks
L1 -> L2: looks like conceptual mediation
L2 -> L1: looks like word association
dog
hund

11. Models of the bilingual lexicons
The results are mixed, supporting more complex models (e.g., BIA+, Dijkstra & vanHeuven, 2002)
May be different in different bilinguals depending on things:
age of acquisition
relative proficiency
May be different for different tasks:
Translation (production)
Word recognition (comprehension)
For those interested in recent discussion check out:
Kroll, vanHell, Tokowicz, and Green (2010)

12. Interesting effects in bilinguals
Interference
Code switching
Cognitive advantages
Types of sentences used
Past tense
Plural
Third person singular
Present progressive
Determiners
Pronominalization
Particle movement
Subcategorization
Auxillaries
Yes/no questions
Wh-questions
Word order

13. Interference between languages
A native speaker can use many cues (available at different times while processing):
Word order
Animacy
Noun-Verb agreement
Not all languages use the same cues to the same extent
e.g., relative to English, German doesn’t rely as much on word order, but relies more on morphological agreement processes
German speakers use all three, in both German and English
Monolingual English
Kilborn (1989, 1994)
Sentence 1: waitress doing the pushing (even though the semantics/real world knowledge is strange). Both word order and agreement support this view.
Sentence 2: very strange, position favors telephone, but verb and animacy suggest cowboys
Sentence 3: English word order suggests object follows the verb
Sentence 4: animacy and agreement suggest teacher as actor
Found that German-English bilinguals (English as L2) typically carry over the dominant processing strategies from their native languages.
This interacts with their level of fluency in the second language
As you read or listen, determine who or what is the one performing the action.
The waitress pushes the cowboys.
The telephones pushes the cowboys.
Kisses the table the apple.
The baskets the teacher kicks.

14. Interference between languages
Does knowing two languages lead to interference?
When found, interference is at multiple levels
For simultaneous learners
Phonological - least amount of interference
Lexical - mixing words from different languages
Initially, appear to use a one word per thing strategy
But as they realize there that they’re speaking two language, then they’ll use words from both languages simultaneously
Syntactic
Until year two, may use only one syntactic system which is common to both languages
Then a brief period with two sets of lexical items, but still a common syntax
Finally, two lexicons and two sets of syntax
Types of sentences used
Past tense
Plural
Third person singular
Present progressive
Determiners
Pronominalization
Particle movement
Subcategorization
Auxillaries
Yes/no questions
Wh-questions
Word order

15. “I want a motorcycle VERDE”
Code switching
When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language
“I want a motorcycle VERDE”
Switching is systematic, not random – there are certain important structures where code-switches do / do not occur
Social reasons: participants in conversation, purpose, context etc.
Also syntactic reasons.
And not just ‘forgetting’ a word: code-switching is an active choice to achieve a social or linguistic aim through conversational strategy. (Active, though does not mean ‘conscious’)

16. Code switching
When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language
“I want a motorcycle VERDE”
The Spanish adjective “verde” follows a grammatical rule that is observed by most bilingual speakers that code-switch
“I want a VERDE motorcycle”
Would be incorrect
because language switching can occur only if the adjective is placed according to the rules of the language of the adjective
In this case, the adjective is in Spanish; therefore, the adjective must follow the Spanish grammatical rule that states that the noun must precede the adjective (in English adjectives precede the noun)

17. “I want a motorcycle VERDE”
Code switching
When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language
“I want a motorcycle VERDE”
Generally, bilinguals take longer to read and comprehend sentences containing code-switched words
May be due to a “mental switch mechanism” that determines which of the bilingual’s two mental dictionaries are “on” or “off” during language comprehension.
This mental switch is responsible for selecting the appropriate mental dictionary to be employed during the comprehension of a sentence.
E.g., if reading an English, a Spanish code-switched word is encountered, the mental switch must disable the English linguistic system, and enable the Spanish linguistic system.

18. “I want a motorcycle VERDE”
Code switching
When bilinguals substitute a word or phrase from one language with a phrase or word from another language
“I want a motorcycle VERDE”
Generally, bilinguals take longer to read and comprehend sentences containing code-switched words
This time difference depends on similarity of the languages
Chinese-English bilinguals take longer to recognize English code-switched words in Chinese sentences only if the English words contain initial consonant-consonant (e.g., flight) clusters, simply because the Chinese language lacks this phonotactic structure.
Another current view suggests that language dominance (i.e., which language is used more frequently) plays an important role in code-switching
Heredia & Altarriba (2001) is a good review

19. Cognitive advantages
Some evidence suggest that being bilingual can have an impact on cognition outside of language
Bialystok and colleagues
Bilinguals are very proficient at switching between languages
Bilinguals also have to be good at suppressing the contextually inappropriate language
Bilingual advantage has been found in several non-linguistic tasks that may involve task switching and inhibition processes
E.g., Stroop task, flanker task, card sort task, Simon task