What is memory? Scientists have proposed a wide variety of spatial metaphors to understand it. These range from the 2D wax tablets proposed by Plato and Aristotle and subsequently Freud, with his magic writing pad, to the 3D physical spaces that one can walk around inside, such as the subway of Collins and Quillian. If memory has such a spatial structure, then it suggests a simple rule: items in memory can be near or far from one another. Anything with a near-and-far structure lends itself to a network representation. Such spatial structure also lends itself to being in the wrong place at the wrong time: remembering things that never happened and forgetting things that did. This chapter explores how structure facilitates memories and also looks at a specific case of false memory to highlight how modeling the process of spreading activation on networks can enrich our understanding of structure beyond degree.

This chapter provides a thorough, up-to-date review of the literature on the phonetics and phonology of early bilinguals. It pulls together studies from a range of bilingual settings, including bilingual societies and heritage language contexts. While the chapter mostly reviews evidence from adolescent and adult participants, it also makes reference to the child bilingualism literature, where appropriate. The chapter first reviews studies on the accents of early versus late bilinguals, followed by a discussion of the various explanatory accounts for the observed differences between these two groups. Subsequently, the critical significance of early linguistic experience on bilingual speech patterns is considered, with particular reference to the evidence from childhood overhearers and international adoptees. The following sections then review studies comparing simultaneous and early sequential bilinguals, and those exploring the role of language dominance, continued use, the language of the environment in bilinguals’ pronunciation patterns, and the role of sociolinguistic factors in early bilingual speech patterns. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

This chapter reviews evidence that the orthographic forms (spellings) of L2 sounds and words affect L2 phonological representation and processing. Orthographic effects are found in speech perception, speech production, phonological awareness, and the learning of words and sounds. Orthographic forms facilitate L2 speakers/listeners – for instance in lexical learning – but also have negative effects, resulting in sound additions, deletions, and substitutions. This happens because L2 speakers’ L2 orthographic knowledge differs from the actual working of the L2 writing system. Orthographic effects are established after little exposure to orthographic forms, are persistent, can be reinforced by factors other than orthography, including spoken input, and are modulated by individual-level and sound/word-level variables. Future research should address gaps in current knowledge, for instance investigating the effects of teaching interventions, and aim at producing a coherent framework.

This chapter outlines studies within the domain of speech perception by bilingual adult listeners. I first discuss studies that have examined bilinguals’ perception of L1 and/or L2 speech segments, as well as those that have tested perception of unfamiliar, non-native speech segments. In turn, I examine each of the factors that are known to affect bilinguals’ perception of speech, which include age of L2 acquisition, effects of L1:L2 usage as they pertain to language dominance and proficiency, and short-term contextual effects on speech perception. I also provide an overview of the literature on bilinguals’ perception of suprasegmentals. Finally, I explore what I think are some of the crucial questions facing the field of bilingual speech perception.

This chapter presents an overview of what is currently known about phonetic and phonological first language (L1) attrition and drift in bilingual speech and introduces a new theory of bilingual speech, Attrition & Drift in Access, Production, and Perception Theory (ADAPPT). Attrition and drift are defined and differentiated along several dimensions, including duration of change, source in second language (L2) experience, consciousness, agency, and scope. We address why findings of attrition and drift are important for our overall understanding of bilingual speech and draw links between ADAPPT and well-known theories of L2 speech, such as the revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r), the Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2 (PAM-L2), and the Second Language Linguistic Perception model (L2LP). The significance of findings revealing attrition and drift is discussed in relation to different linguistic subfields. The chapter raises the question of how attrition and drift potentially interact to influence speech production and perception in the bilingual’s L1 over the life span; additional directions for future research are pointed out as well.

This chapter provides a cross-sectional overview of current neuroimaging techniques and signals used to investigate the processing of linguistically relevant speech units in the bilingual brain. These techniques are reviewed in the light of important contributions to the understanding of perceptual and production processes in different bilingual populations. The chapter is structured as follows. First, we discuss several non-invasive technologies that provide unique insights in the study of bilingual phonetics and phonology. This introductory section is followed by a brief review of the key brain regions and pathways that support the perception and production of speech units. Next, we discuss the neuromodulatory effects of different bilingual experiences on these brain regions from shorter to longer neural latencies and timescales. As we will show, bilingualism can significantly alter the time course, strength, and nature of the neural responses to speech, when compared with monolinguals.

Mersea Island is a small island off the coast of north-east Essex, UK, which has a rich history of contact, ranging from Viking and Roman settlements to more modern influxes of evacuees and military personnel during both World Wars. The island itself also has a history of isolation, due to its only access road being cut off regularly by lunar tides. However, this isolation has been challenged over more recent years by various building projects, resulting in a large influx of non-islanders moving and settling on the island. This overview will present a range of phonological features across both the consonantal and vocalic systems of Mersea Island English as evidence from both older and younger Islanders to highlight traditional features and the direction of change within the community as a whole. A selection of morphosyntactic features which highlight more salient structures of Mersea Island English is then presented before a discussion of how we may wish to evaluate paths of change moving forward in relation to both socio-cultural and linguistic factors.

This chapter presents on overview of present-day Welsh English(es) with a focus on regional variation and diachronic developments over the past fifty years. The Anglicisation of Wales has progressed in several phases over the centuries, which is why the accents and dialects of English in Wales are regionally distinctive, the Welsh language and neighbouring English English dialects impacting them to different degrees. The chapter takes the Survey of Anglo-Welsh dialects (Parry 1999) as a starting point and uses corpus and survey data compiled in the twenty-first century as well as recent research publications, thereby examining the main trends of development in the different domains of English. Phonological variation and change are described across a broad North–South continuum, whereas in morphosyntax the greatest differences can be found between the predominantly English-speaking Southeast and the bilingual, historically Welsh-dominant North and West Wales. In regional lexicon, sociolinguistically and nationally salient items are relatively few, originating from both Welsh and English. Finally, the chapter draws attention to recent research, and highlights some caveats and future directions for the study of English in Wales.

In this chapter we examine a number of present-day varieties of Scots and Scottish Standard English (SSE). We begin by describing the Scots–SSE continuum, with its roots in earlier socio-cultural developments. We then turn to the present day, examining the attitudes towards different varieties of Scots across geographic and social dimensions. The main part of the chapter focuses on recent research on the many varieties of Scots, providing a detailed picture of the phonological and morphosyntactic forms found therein. In terms of phonology, Scots and SSE overlap, but remain divergent, especially given a number of phonological changes in Scots over the twentieth century, and continued Scots regional variation. The analysis of morphosyntax shows a core of forms shared across most varieties, including SSE, and these are largely stable. A number of other ‘home-grown’ forms are increasing in use across Scotland. Overall, our analysis shows that Scots is maintaining its own distinctive pathway in the twenty-first century.

The introduction to this volume describes its content. It also provides the rationale for including selected topics and provides comments on the manner of presentation adopted in this volume.

Phonology has generally been neglected as a nexus of philosophical interest despite certain debates within the field both inviting and needing philosophical reflection. Yet, the few who have attempted such inquiry have noted something special about the field and its target. On the one hand, it shares formal and structural aspects with syntax. On the other, it seems to require more literal interpretation in terms of components such as hierarchy and sequential ordering. In this chapter, the nature of the phoneme, the theoretical centrepiece of traditional phonology, comes under scrutiny. The notion, as well as the field itself, is extended to other modalities, such as sign, in accordance with the contemporary trajectory of the field. This extension, and the connections with language and gesture in general, open up the possibility of a philosophical action theory with phonology as its basis. Motor and action theory have been proffered recently in connection with syntax, with little success. However, it’s argued that phonology serves as a better point of comparison. The chapter discusses a range of issues from autosegmental phonology, feature grammar, and sign language, to gestural grammar, motor cognition, and recent 4E approaches to cognition.

Chapter 8 moves to the third strand of the Indian linguistic tradition (alongside ‘grammar’ and semantics): phonetic and phonological analysis. This strand of the Indian tradition has particular relevance to the modern Western concept of the ‘phoneme’, which has played a central yet controversial role in phonological analysis over the last century. Several criticisms of the phoneme concept have attributed its popularity in modern linguistics to the centrality of alphabetic writing in Western society, and some have pointed to India as a contrasting situation, where writing was never alphabetic. I show that in contrast to what is often assumed, the ancient Indian tradition of phonetic and phonological analysis depended on a concept essentially equivalent to the modern concept of a phoneme, despite not being influenced by an alphabetic (or indeed, originally by any) writing system.

The third chapter is the first to exclusively address core linguistic issues by comparison of the ancient Indian and modern Western traditions. It addresses rule interaction, an issue which has been a core topic of research in Pāṇinian linguistics, and which has also been a central issue in the development of modern phonological theory, in many respects driving theoretical developments over the last fifty years. A central focus is on the Elsewhere Principle, also known as 'Pāṇini's principle', and on the outworking of this fundamental principle in different phonological theories including Lexical Phonology, Declarative Phonology and Optimality Theory.

This introduction to the volume provides background on common themes that appear across its chapters. First, it contextualizes the notions of heritage languages and heritage speakers before providing reasons why research on heritage sound systems has lagged behind work on other linguistic areas. It then offers an overview of what we have discovered to date about heritage sound systems, while also pointing out gaps and topics that merit further exploration. Motivated by the discussion in the first portion of this piece, the latter half covers the breadth, goals, and novel aspects of the current volume before providing brief summaries of the empirical studies carried out in each of its seventeen chapters.

The identification of Assyrian personal names in Babylonian sources poses a challenge because there is a considerable degree of overlap between the name repertoires of Babylonia and Assyria in the first millennium BCE. As a first step, this chapter identifies three relevant categories of names attested in Babylonian sources: distinctively Assyrian names, distinctively Babylonian names, and names common to both Assyria and Babylonia. The next step is to isolate names belonging to the first category: those that are distinctively Assyrian. To this end, the chapter identifies four diagnostic features which may occur separately or in combination: (i) Assyrian divine elements; (ii) Assyrian toponyms; (iii) Assyrian dialectal forms, and (iv) vocabulary particular to the Neo-Assyrian onomasticon. Orthography and phonology, including the treatment of sibilants, are further considerations. The chapter also addresses the historical background since this provides important context for investigating the presence of Assyrian name-bearers in Babylonia, both before and after the fall of Assyria in 612 BCE.

reviews what has been learned about how Chinese characters and words are identified. The chapter begins with a brief review of what has been learned about word identification from studies of alphabetic languages like English, using this review to identify “benchmark” findings that are then used to organize a discussion of what has been learned about Chinese character and word identification. The chapter also reviews those computer models that have been developed to simulate and explain Chinese character and word identification.