This research examines whether an individual's linguistic knowledge, either as a speaker of a particular language or as a bilingual, influences theory of mind development. Three- and four-year-old English monolinguals, Mandarin Chinese monolinguals, and Mandarin-English bilinguals were given appearance-reality, level 2 perspective-taking, and false-belief tasks. All children were tested twice, a week apart; the bilinguals were tested in each of their languages. The 4-year-olds in each group performed significantly better than the corresponding 3-year-olds. Both monolingual groups performed similarly on the tasks, and the bilinguals performed significantly better than the monolingual groups, although when the two testing times were examined separately, they had only a near-significant tendency to perform better at the second testing time. Possible explanations for this evidence of a bilingual advantage are greater inhibitory control, greater metalinguistic understanding, and a greater sensitivity to sociolinguistic interactions with interlocutors.

How does lexical selection function in highly-proficient bilingual speakers? What is the role of the non-response language during the course of lexicalization? Evidence of cross-language interference was obtained by Hermans, Bongaerts, De Bot and Schreuder (1998) using the picture-word interference paradigm: participants took longer to name the picture when it appeared with a word phonologically related to the target's translation than when it was accompanied by a control (phono-translation interference). Here we report two picture-word interference experiments that explored whether the same pattern of interference is present for highly-proficient bilinguals producing speech in L2. The results of the two experiments partially replicate those of Hermans et al. (1998), revealing the reliability of the phono-translation effect. We discuss some possible loci of this effect during the lexicalization process, and its implications for models of bilinguals speech production.

Listeners efficiently exploit sentence prosody to direct attention to words bearing sentence accent. This effect has been explained as a search for focus, furthering rapid apprehension of semantic structure. A first experiment supported this explanation: English listeners detected phoneme targets in sentences more rapidly when the target-bearing words were in accented position or in focussed position, but the two effects interacted, consistent with the claim that the effects serve a common cause. In a second experiment a similar asymmetry was observed with Dutch listeners and Dutch sentences. In a third and a fourth experiment, proficient Dutch users of English heard English sentences; here, however, the two effects did not interact. The results suggest that less efficient mapping of prosody to semantics may be one way in which nonnative listening fails to equal native listening.

Cross-linguistic transfer can be explained by structural ambiguity in a bilingual child's two languages (Döpke, 1998; Hulk and Müller, 2000). This study examined the effect of morphological ambiguity in transfer of deverbal compounds in English and French. English-speaking children go through a stage of producing ungrammatical verb-object compounds in their acquisition of object-verb-er compounds. In French, verb-object compounds are productive. If structural ambiguity predicts when transfer occurs, French-English bilingual children should use more ungrammatical verb-object compounds than English-speaking children and more grammatical verb-object compounds than French-speaking children. This study focused on 36 French-English bilingual children's production and comprehension of novel deverbal compounds in both languages. The results supported these predictions for production but not for comprehension. It is concluded that cross-linguistic transfer is a language production phenomenon and that structural ambiguity can predict when morphological transfer can occur.

Two eye-tracking experiments examined spoken language processing in Russian-English bilinguals. The proportion of looks to objects whose names were phonologically similar to the name of a target object in either the same language (within-language competition), the other language (between-language competition), or both languages at the same time (simultaneous competition) was compared to the proportion of looks in a control condition in which no objects overlapped phonologically with the target. Results support previous findings of parallel activation of lexical items within and between languages, but suggest that the magnitude of the between-language competition effect may vary across first and second languages and may be mediated by a number of factors such as stimuli, language background, and language mode.

In five experiments highly-proficient bilinguals were asked to name two sets of pictures in their L2: a) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have the same grammatical gender value, and b) pictures whose names in the L2 and their corresponding L1 translations have different gender values. In Experiments 1, 2, and 3 Croatian-Italian speakers were asked to name the pictures in Italian by means of NPs in various experimental contexts. In Experiment 4A, Spanish-Catalan and Catalan-Spanish bilinguals were asked to name the pictures in Spanish, and in Experiment 4B, Italian-French bilinguals did so in French. The results of these experiments revealed no differences between same- and different-gender pictures. Furthermore, the performance of Italian, Spanish, and French monolingual speakers parallels that of bilingual speakers. However, a robust frequency effect was observed across experiments. This pattern of results supports the notion that the gender value of the words in the non-response language does not affect processing in the response language, and suggests that the two gender systems of a bilingual are functionally autonomous.

Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a complex skill, where language comprehension and production take place at the same time in two different languages. In this study we identified some of the basic cognitive skills involved in SI, focusing on the roles of memory and lexical retrieval. We administered a reading span task in two languages and a verbal digit span task in the native language to assess memory capacity, and a picture naming and a word translation task to tap the retrieval time of lexical items in two languages, and we related performance on these four tasks to interpreting skill in untrained bilinguals. The results showed that word translation and picture naming latencies correlate with interpreting performance. Also digit span and reading span were associated with SI performance, only less strongly so. A graphical models analysis indicated that specifically word translation efficiency and working memory form independent subskills of SI performance in untrained bilinguals.

We explored the role of age of acquisition in picture naming with a group of unbalanced, late bilinguals and a group of monolinguals. We hypothesised that we would find effects of L2 age of acquisition on L2 picture naming performance in late bilinguals if the age of acquisition effects we and others have found in L1 picture naming are not limited to language capabilities acquired early in the lifespan. In Experiment 1, late bilingual Spanish–English participants named a large set of pictures in their L2 (English). The most important predictor of naming ability was L2 age of acquisition. In Experiment 2, monolingual English participants named the same pictures. Naming speed was predicted by L1 age of acquisition. Hence speed of picture naming in a given language was predicted by age of acquisition values for that language, that is, L2 values predicted L2 performance (Experiment 1) and L1 values predicted L1 performance (Experiment 2). On the basis of these results we conclude that age of acquisition effects are not restricted to items learned before any putative critical period, but should be observed for items learned at any age. That is, age of acquisition effects are more likely to be due to the relative order in which items are acquired within a language.

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, I wish to discuss two sets of problematic cases that arose when I applied Myers-Scotton's (1993) Matrix Language Frame model of codeswitching to Arabic diglossic switching (Boussofara-Omar, 1999). The first set involves the co-occurrence of system morphemes from both varieties of Arabic within a single CP. The second set concerns CPs in which the word order is that of the dialect but the system morphemes are from Standard Arabic, and CPs in which clashes occur between the subcategorization restrictions of the two varieties of Arabic participating in diglossic switching. The Matrix Language Frame model neither predicts nor offers explanations for either case. Second, in an effort to provide an explanation to their occurrence, I revisit the same problematic sets in light of Myers-Scotton's sub-models: the 4-M model and the Abstract Level model (Myers-Scotton and Jake, 2000, 2001), the latest refined version of the MLF model.

Languages vary idiosyncratically in the sets of referents to which common nouns are applied. To use nouns as a native speaker would, second language learners must acquire language-specific naming patterns, not merely a language-to-language correspondence. We asked second language learners to name household objects in English and in their native language, to judge the objects' typicality with respect to English names, and to provide naming strategy reports. The least experienced learners' naming and typicality judgments diverged substantially from native responses. More experienced learners improved, but even those with the most extensive experience retained some discrepancies from native patterns. Time spent immersed in an English-speaking environment was a better predictor of performance than years of formal instruction. Discrepancies do not appear to be due to direct mapping from the learner's own language. We discuss how incomplete lexical knowledge may affect second language performance and the implications for models of second language lexical development.

This paper provides a case study of the fossilized endstate L2 English grammar of an adult native speaker of Turkish. Results are presented from production data (over 3400 utterances, gathered over 2 time periods 18 months apart), concentrating on verbal and nominal inflection and associated syntactic properties; data from a number of other tasks are also presented. A high level of accuracy in suppliance of English tense and agreement morphology was found. In contrast, suppliance of definite and indefinite articles was significantly lower but nevertheless appropriate. Syntactic correlates (such as verb placement, presence of overt subjects, case assignment, definiteness effects) were all completely accurate, suggesting no underlying impairment to functional categories or features. There is some evidence for influence from the L1, which has rich inflection but lacks articles, but this appears to be an effect on suppliance of overt morphology and not on underlying representation, which shows properties appropriate to the L2.

The present study investigated processing of morphologically complex words in three different frequency ranges in monolingual Finnish speakers and Finnish-Swedish bilinguals. By employing a visual lexical decision task, we found a differential pattern of results in monolinguals vs. bilinguals. Monolingual Finns seemed to process low frequency and medium frequency inflected Finnish nouns mostly by morpheme-based recognition but high frequency inflected nouns through full-form representations. In contrast, bilinguals demonstrated a processing delay for all inflections throughout the whole frequency range, suggesting decomposition for all inflected targets. This may reflect different amounts of exposure to the word forms in the two groups. Inflected word forms that are encountered very frequently will acquire full-form representations, which saves processing time. However, with the lower rates of exposure, which characterize bilingual individuals, full-form representations do not start to develop.

The proposal has been made (Zuckerman, 1999, 2001, with various antecedents) that economy of derivation is operative in language acquisition in such a way that whenever movement appears to be optional to the child, s/he chooses the derivation without movement. In this paper we undertake the task of finding evidence for this claim in monolingual and bilingual acquisition. We draw on data available in the literature and on original data from a bilingual English-Dutch child. This child's word order patterns testify to the fact that movement never occurs beyond the target (e.g. there are no V2 embedded clauses in his Dutch productions), and when deviant word orders are attested they result from lack of raising (in particular, lack of verb raising in embedded sentences in English). These patterns are predicted if economy of derivation holds; further, bilingual children, having as input languages with possibly diverging parameter settings, are especially prone to an extended parameter setting period, giving rise to deviant word order patterns, and thus offering insight into the mechanisms of language acquisition.

It is a matter of debate whether the two differentiated grammatical systems in a bilingual child develop autonomously, or whether there is interdependence and in what areas (Genesee, 2001; Meisel, 2001). Extensive research is being carried out in the emergence of the two grammars, but not much attention has been given to the development of discourse in simultaneous bilinguals. This study examines longitudinal narrative data from a Spanish-English school-age simultaneous bilingual child, and, in particular, the development of character introductions in the story. The child's stories in both languages show similar degrees of appropriate use of grammatical means for discourse purposes during the period under study and inadequacies are related not to the specific language used by the child, but to semantic and syntactic factors that promote or hinder appropriateness and affect both languages equally. The child follows the characteristic style identified for each of the two languages in studies of monolingual Spanish- and English-speaking children and adults. This indicates an autonomous development. However, there is also evidence that the two styles are not as differentiated as might be expected in comparison with monolinguals. These results support the view that, although the two languages of a bilingual child develop autonomously to a great extent, there are certain aspects which develop interdependently (Genesee, 2001).

This paper considers whether the findings on the referential properties of Root Infinitives in monolingual children (Wijnen, 1997; Hoekstra and Hyams, 1998) are replicated in a bilingual situation. Testing a proposal put forward by Hulk and Müller (2000), the present study investigates whether and how crosslinguistic influence manifests itself, using original longitudinal data from a bilingual German/English child. The bilingual results are found to be broadly consistent with the monolingual data: there is no indication of either quantitative or qualitative crosslinguistic influence. Consequently, it is argued that these data show that Hulk and Müller's proposal needs refining. Suggestions are made as to how this could be achieved.

The Rodriguez-Fornells, Rotte, Heinze, Nösselt and Münte (2002) paper published in Nature, “Brain potential and functional MRI evidence for how to handle two languages with one brain”, is discussed by two of its authors, both neuroscientists, and by two language scientists. First, a short summary of the paper is given. This is followed by a critical commentary offered by the language scientists. The neuroscientists respond, and a final comment is offered by the language scientists. The four authors conclude that a two-way collaboration between neurosciences and language sciences should be encouraged in order to make headway in our understanding of language processing and representation in bilinguals.