Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T13:37:54.823Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Late-L2 increased reliance on L1 neurocognitive substrates: A comment on Babcock, Stowe, Maloof, Brovetto & Ullman (2012)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2013

MICHEL PARADIS
MICHEL PARADIS*
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor, McGill University
*
Address for correspondence: Michel Paradis, Department of Linguistics, McGill University, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Babcok et al. (2012) claim that Paradis (1994, 2004, 2009) argues that the reliance of late L2 learners on L1 neurocognitive mechanisms increases over time across both lexical and grammatical functions, namely for lexical items as well as rule-governed grammatical procedures, when in fact one can find repeated statements to the contrary in the very publications cited by the authors. Actually, Paradis’ main contention over the past 20 years has been that, contrary to grammatical functions, lexical items (as meaning–form relationships) are always of the same nature in L1 and L2 (hence stored declaratively). Thus in L2, only the neurocognitive mechanisms on which aspects of the grammar depend change over time. Consequently, the finding that length of residence (like age of arrival) influences the mechanisms underlying regular (composed), but not irregular (stored) verb forms, is compatible with Paradis’ views, in contradiction to what Babcock et al. are also suggesting.

Keywords

lexical itemlate-learned second languagelexiconvocabularydeclarative memory
Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 704 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Babcock, L., Stowe, J. C., Maloof, C. J., Brovetto, C., & Ullman, M. T. (2012). The storage and composition of inflected forms in adult learned second language: A study of the influence of length of residence, age of arrival, sex, and other factors. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 820–840.Google Scholar
Kirsner, K. (1986). Lexical function: Is a bilingual account necessary? In Vaid, J. (ed.), Language processing in bilinguals: Psycholinguistic and neuropsychological perspectives, pp. 21–45. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Leed, R. L., & Nakhimovsky, A. D. (1979). Lexical functions and language learning. The Slavic and East European Journal, 23, 104–113.Google Scholar
Mel'čuk, I. (1996). Lexical functions: A tool for the description of lexical relations in a lexicon. In Wanner, L. (ed.), Lexical functions in lexicography and natural language processing, pp. 56–100. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Mel'čuk, I. (1998). Collocations and lexical functions. In Cowie, A. P. (ed.), Phraseology: Theory, analysis, and applications, pp. 23–53. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Mel'čuk, I. A. (2007). Lexical functions. In Burger, H., Dobrovol'skij, D., Kühn, P. & Norrick, N. (eds.), Phraseology: An international handbook of contemporary research (vol. 1), pp. 119–131. New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ostrin, R. K., & Tyler, L. K. (1995). Dissociations of lexical function: Semantics, syntax, and morphology. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 12, 345–389.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, M. (1994). Neurolinguistic aspects of implicit and explicit memory: Implications for bilingualism. In Ellis, N. (ed.), Implicit and explicit learning of second languages, pp. 393–419. London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Paradis, M. (2004). A neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Paradis, M. (2006). More Belles infidels – or why do so many bilingual studies speak with forked tongue? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 19, 195–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradis, M. (2007). Why single-word experiments do not address language representation. In Arabski, J. (ed.), Challenging tasks for psycholinguistics in the new century, pp. 22–31. Katowice: University of Silesia Press. [Presented at the 7th ISAPL Congress, Cieszyn, Poland, September 2004.]Google Scholar
Paradis, M. (2008a) Bilingual laterality: Unfounded claim of validity. A comment on Hull & Vaid (2007). Neuropsychologia, 46, 1588–1590.Google Scholar
Paradis, M. (2008b). Language and communication disorders in multilinguals. In Stemmer & Whitaker (eds.), pp. 341–349.Google Scholar
Paradis, M. (2009). Declarative and procedural determinants of second languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ryan, J. N. (1985). The language gap: Common words with technical meanings. Journal of Chemical Education, 62, 1098–1099.Google Scholar
Stemmer, B., & Whitaker, H. (eds.) (2008). Handbook of the neuroscience of language. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T. (2006). The declarative/procedural model and the shallow structure hypothesis. Applied Pyscholinguistics, 27, 97–105.Google Scholar
Ullman, M. T. (2008). The role of memory systems in disorders of language. In Stemmer & Whitaker (eds.), pp. 189–198.Google Scholar