We present a critical examination of phonological effects in a picture–word interference task. Using a methodology minimizing stimulus repetition, English/Spanish and Spanish/English bilinguals named pictures in either L1 or L2 (blocked contexts) or in both (mixed contexts) while ignoring word distractors in L1 or L2. Distractors were either phonologically related to the picture name (direct; FISH–fist), or related through translation to the picture name (TT; LEG–milk–leche), or they were unrelated (bear–peach). Results demonstrate robust activation of phonological representations by translation equivalents of word distractors. Although both direct and TT distractors facilitated naming, TT facilitation was more consistent in L2 naming and under mixed contexts.

This study reports the results of a picture verification task assessing the interpretation of intra-sentential anaphora and cataphora in Italian by a group of English–Italian bilingual eight-year-olds, a group of age-matched Italian monolinguals, and a group of Italian monolingual adults. No significant differences between the groups were observed in the choice of a subject antecedent for null anaphoric pronouns, and only marginally significant differences were reported between the adults and the two groups of children for the interpretation of null cataphoric pronouns. By contrast, overt pronominal subjects were accepted as co-referential with a subject antecedent significantly more often by the bilingual children than by the monolingual children and the adults in the anaphoric condition, and both groups of children accepted a subject as the antecedent of an overt cataphoric pronoun significantly more often than the adults. These results are interpreted in the context of language-universal and language-specific processing strategies in anaphora resolution in bilingual and monolingual acquisition.

This paper examines the syntax of GENDER CONCORD in mixed utterances where bilingual children switch between a modifier in one language and a noun in another. Particular attention is paid to how children deal with potential gender mismatches between modifier and noun, i.e., if one of the languages has grammatical gender but the other does not, or if one of the languages has a ternary gender system and the other a binary one. We show that the English–Italian and French–German bilingual children in our study accommodate the gender properties of the noun to those of its modifiers in such cases, in order to ensure convergence.

This paper investigates the shared or independent nature of grammatical gender representations in the bilingual mental lexicon and the role word form similarity (as in the case of cognates) plays in these representations. In a translation task from Greek (L1) to German (L2), nouns that had the same gender in both languages were translated faster than nouns with different genders, but only when the L2 target utterance required computation of gender agreement (adjective + noun). This tendency held for both cognates and noncognates. Unlike noncognates, however, gender-incongruent cognates yielded more errors than gender-congruent cognates. These results are interpreted as evidence for a shared L1–L2 gender system with L2 cognates relying more heavily on the L1 gender value than noncognates.

This paper presents an empirical study of how different wh -words behave in English speakers' L2 Chinese wh-questions. Our results indicate that L2 Chinese wh-questions are specified by the Chinese wh -particle ne and that there is neither variability nor L1 transfer in this aspect of L2 grammars as no wh -movement is found in English speakers' L2 Chinese. However, wh -words do not develop in a uniform fashion and different wh -words behave differently both synchronically and developmentally in English speakers' L2 Chinese. There is evidence for both temporary variability and persistent variability in some aspects of English speakers' L2 Chinese wh-questions. This is believed to result from breakdowns at the lexical morphology–syntax interface and morphosyntax–semantics interface levels in L2 Chinese grammars. We will provide an account for the no variability, temporary variability as well as persistent variability in English speakers' L2 Chinese wh-questions.

In four experiments we explored processes underlying L2 gender retrieval. We focused on L1 interference and on the influence of the L2 noun's termination. In Experiments 1 and 2 we tried to manipulate the intensity of L1 interference. We found that L2 speakers cannot eliminate or substantially reduce the interlingual interference neither when they know the response language long in advance in a situation in which code-switching is required (Experiment 1), nor when they are close to the monolingual mode (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 yielded evidence that gender typicality of the L2 noun's termination also exerts an influence on L2 processing, both in production and comprehension. L2 gender thus does not seem to be stored as a fixed feature as it is assumed for L1. Rather, our data support the assumption that it is computed anew each time when needed for processing. Further implications for modeling are discussed.

In this paper I claim that there is evidence of grammatical interference in the development of ergative case in bilingual children acquiring Basque and Spanish. While both monolingual and bilingual children have difficulty acquiring the ergative case in Basque (Barreña, 1995; Ezeizabarrena, 1996), my results indicate that bilingual children omit the ergative case marker to a greater extent than monolingual children. I argue that this difference is the result of interference from Spanish, which takes the form of reinforcing a non-target-like option in Basque (Müller and Hulk, 2001).

This study reports on the use of (c)overt subjects and subject–verb agreement in Hebrew in the spontaneous speech of a child, EK, acquiring Hebrew and English simultaneously from birth and of five slightly younger Hebrew monolingual controls. Analysis shows that EK's production of pragmatically inappropriate overt subjects is more than three times that of the controls, while she resembles the controls in terms of subject–verb agreement, a purely syntactic phenomenon. These results strongly suggest that influence from English is restricted to phenomena that involve the syntax/pragmatics interface, supporting Hulk and Müller's (2000) hypothesis that crosslinguistic influence in early bilingual acquisition is a predictable and systematic phenomenon.

The Editors and members of the Editorial Board wish to thank the following guest consultants for having reviewed manuscripts submitted to the journal this past year.