Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2016
This special issue began as a conference on Bilingual and Multilingual Interaction at Bangor University in 2012. The papers collected here all have novel elements, either because of their innovative methods, their unusual data, or their unexpected findings. They present findings from studies of bilinguals speaking six different pairs of languages, and use a range of methods including experiments, naturalistic observation and auditory judgment data. Despite the differences in subject matter and methodological approaches, all the papers demonstrate that bilinguals draw on resources which are different from those of monolinguals. They show that the two languages spoken by bilinguals have clearly discernible effects on one another, and that these effects can potentially be enhancing. Future research will no doubt build on the studies presented here and extend our understanding of cross-language effects in bilingual production and comprehension.
All papers collected in this Special Issue except one (by Chang) were originally presented at the conference held at Bangor University, from 30th March to 1st April 2012. This conference was part of the programme of the ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism in Theory and Practice, and the ESRC is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are due to Theresa Biberauer and M. Carmen Parafita Couto for comments on an earlier version of this Introduction.