Separated from the rest of Europe by the English Channel, yet also linked to it through political and linguistic ties after the Norman Conquest, the musical culture of medieval England displays both connections to and differences from that of its neighbours. Latin song was composed in England and imported from elsewhere, and songs in the vernacular languages of Middle English and Anglo-Norman French also flourished. Songs in all three languages were often compiled together in manuscripts, and some existed in alternative forms, with texts switched to another language. This chapter examines the musical precursors of one of the most famous of all medieval songs, Sumer is icumen in, and shows that the production of polyphony and song in England (as well as Scotland and Wales) was vibrant and distinctive. Surviving pieces from the repertory of Worcester polyphony hint at English composers’ interest in the musical techniques of voice exchange and hocket, but the fragmentary state of many English sources suggests that the losses have been immense. We conclude the chapter with the genre of the English carol, cultivated briefly but fruitfully in the early fifteenth century.

One of the crucial questions in bilingual research is whether all languages known to a bilingual speaker are coactivated during language processing. Psycholinguists have frequently addressed this issue by comparing processing patterns of words shared across languages with the processing of language-specific items. The present chapter offers a brief review of studies investigating the processing of cognates (i.e., words that share form and meaning across languages) and noncognates, followed by a discussion of factors affecting cognate processing in bilingual research. The influence of these factors is discussed with respect to the type of cognates involved in the materials, task demands, and, finally, in terms of participants’ individual differences.