This study examined how noun reading by bilinguals is influenced by orthographic similarity with their translation equivalents in another language. Eye movements of Dutch–English bilinguals reading an entire novel in L1 and L2 were analyzed.

In L2, we found a facilitatory effect of orthographic overlap. Additional facilitation for identical cognates was found for later eye movement measures. This shows that the complex, semantic context of a novel does not eliminate cross-lingual activation in natural reading.

In L1 we detected non-identical cognate facilitation for first fixation durations of longer nouns. Identical cognate facilitation was found on total reading times for high frequent nouns. This study is the first to show cognate facilitation in L1 reading of narrative text. This shows that even when reading a novel in the mother tongue, lexical access is not restricted to the target language.

The present study investigated orthographic and phonological processing in L2 French spoken word recognition by Finnish learners of French, using the masked cross-modal priming paradigm. Experiment 1 showed a repetition effect in L2 within-language priming that was most pronounced for high proficiency learners and a significant effect for French pseudohomophones. In the between-language Experiment 2, high proficiency learners showed significant facilitation from L1 Finnish to L2 French shared orthography in the absence of phonological and semantic overlap. This effect was not observed in the lower intermediate group, which showed a significant benefit of L1 pseudohomophones instead. The orthographic effect in the high proficiency group was modulated by subjective familiarity showing facilitation for less familiar but not for highly familiar words. The results suggest that with L2 learners, the extent to which orthographic information affects L2 spoken word recognition depends on their L2 proficiency.

This paper presents the results of a study on cross-linguistic transfer in Andean Spanish word order. In Andean Spanish the object appears in preverbal position more frequently than in non-Andean Spanish, which has been attributed to an influence from Quechua (a Subject–Object–Verb language). The high frequency of preverbal objects could be explained by focus fronting. The main syntactic properties of focus fronting in Spanish are weak crossover and long distance movement. Two elicitation studies designed to test for these properties in non-Andean Spanish, Andean Spanish and Quechua show no evidence of syntactic transfer from Quechua into Andean Spanish. Rather, the analysis of naturalistic data and an elicitation study on question–answer pairs show that there is pragmatic transfer from Quechua into Andean Spanish. The study has implications for theories of syntax and language contact, and especially for the debate on the nature of cross-linguistic transfer.

A structural priming experiment investigated whether bilingual speakers’ processing of their non-native language (L2) depends entirely on their experience of L2, or whether it is also affected by their experience of the native language (L1). German-L1 and Spanish-L1 proficient speakers of English (and English-L1 controls) described pictures of dative events after reading unrelated sentences that had a Prepositional Object (PO) or Double Object (DO) structure. Participants in all three groups were more likely to produce DO descriptions after reading DO sentences than PO sentences. Crucially, Spanish-L1 speakers, whose L1 allows PO but not DO structures, showed the same pattern of priming as German-L1 speakers, whose L1 allows both structures. Additionally, the groups showed no difference in their baseline preference for DO structures. We suggest that in proficient bilinguals, processing in L2 is not affected by L1 experience and L1 preferences, and propose a model to account for our findings.

We used mouse tracking to compare the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in a Stroop task. Participants were instructed to respond to the color of the words (e.g., blue in yellow font) by clicking on response options on the screen. We recorded participants’ movements of a computer mouse: when participants started moving (initiation times), and how fast they moved towards the correct response (x-coordinates over time). Interestingly, initiation times were longer for bilinguals than monolinguals. Nevertheless, when comparing mouse trajectories, bilinguals moved faster towards the correct response. Taken together, these results indicate that bilinguals behave qualitatively differently from monolinguals; bilinguals are “experts” at managing conflicting information. Experts across many different domains take longer to initiate a response, but then they outperform novices. These qualitative differences in performance could be at the root of apparently contradictory findings in the bilingual literature.

This study investigates L1–L2 convergence among bilinguals at an intermediate (CEFR-B2) level of L2 proficiency, focusing on the clausal packaging of Manner and Path of motion. Previous research has shown cross-linguistic differences between English and Japanese in this domain (Allen et al., 2003; Kita & Özyürek, 2003, though note Brown & Gullberg, 2012). We compared descriptions of motion from monolingual English and Japanese speakers to L1 and L2 descriptions from Japanese users of English as a second (ESL) and foreign (EFL) language. Results showed no significant difference between the monolinguals, who predominately used single-clause constructions packaging Manner and Path. However, bilinguals, both ESL and EFL speakers, used significantly more multi-clause constructions in both their L1 and L2. Following Pavlenko (2011a), findings are interpreted as evidence for L1–L2 convergence. We discuss potential bi-directional cross-linguistic influences underpinning the L1–L2 convergence and implications for the restructuring of bilingual systems.

This study explored the effects of quantity and quality of input on bilingual children's acquisition of complex plural morphology in Welsh. Study 1 explored the quality of adult input and revealed target-like marking of plural forms in naturalistic adult speech. Study 2 presented eighty-eight 7–11-year-old children, across three bilingual language groups (L1 Welsh, 2L1, and L2 Welsh), with a plural production task. Results revealed performances approaching L1 adult norms among L1 Welsh-speaking bilinguals, but delayed progression among 2L1 and L2 Welsh bilinguals, although analyses of errors revealed various levels of structural knowledge. Forms requiring the addition of a plural suffix were less difficult to acquire than those involving alterations to the root, with each type acquired with greater levels of accuracy with increasing levels of exposure to the language. The implications of these findings for our understanding of bilingual acquisition of complex structures under minority language conditions are discussed.

The relationship between multilingualism and tolerance of ambiguity (TA) has been examined in recent studies (e.g., Dewaele & Li, 2013; van Compernolle, 2016), which focus upon multilinguals with mixed nationalities in non-EFL contexts. Most of these studies regrettably reflect a failure to use effect sizes or provide information on the reliability and validity of the instruments used. The present study explored the relationship between multilingualism and TA by focusing upon 260 English-using multilinguals of one single nationality in an EFL context. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor solution, rather than a four-factor solution of the original TA scale, suggesting a need to re-examine the validity of such instruments when used outside of their native contexts. The results identified multilingualism, number of languages known and gender as important predictors for TA. Given the relative nature of effect-size benchmarks, a topic-specific effect-size benchmark system is proposed to (re-)interpret the present and previous findings.

This study examines language control deficits in bilingual aphasia in terms of domain specific cognitive control and domain general cognitive control. Thirty Spanish–English controls and ten Spanish–English adults with aphasia completed the flanker task and a word-pair relatedness judgment task. All participants exhibited congruency effects on the flanker task. On the linguistic task, controls did not show the congruency effect on the first level analysis. However, conflict ratios revealed that the control group exhibited significant effects of language control. Additionally, individual patient analysis revealed overall positive and negative effects of language control impairment and a benefit from semantically related word-pairs. Patient data suggest a dissociation between the mechanisms of language control and cognitive control, thus providing evidence for domain specific cognitive control. The influence of language proficiency on speed of translation was also examined. Generally, controls were faster when translating into their dominant language, whereas the patients did not show the same trends.

This study investigates the role of age of acquisition (AoA) on the bilingual mental lexicon. Four groups of participants were tested: (i) English native speakers with minimal exposure to French; (ii) late English–French bilinguals; (iii) early English–French bilinguals; and (iv) simultaneous English–French bilinguals. We used a masked priming paradigm to investigate early, automatic lexical processing at the semantic level by testing both a within-language semantic condition and a cross-language translation condition. AoA was investigated both through group effects and a correlation analysis. We found significant translation priming effects for the simultaneous and early bilinguals only, and a significant correlation between AoA and translation priming effects. Due to the matched L2 proficiency of the early and late bilinguals, these results support our hypothesis that an early AoA, regardless of L2 proficiency, is crucial in order to find the L2-to-L1 priming effects that have often been elusive in recent studies.

This study examines brain responses to boundary effects with respect to Mandarin lexical tone continua for three groups of adult listeners: (1) native English speakers who took advanced Mandarin courses; (2) naïve English speakers; and (3) native Mandarin speakers. A cross-boundary tone pair and a within-category tone pair derived from tonal contrasts (Mandarin Tone 1/Tone 4; Tone 2/Tone 3) with equal physical/acoustical distance were used in an auditory oddball paradigm. For native Mandarin speakers, the cross-category deviant elicited a larger MMN over left hemisphere sensors and larger P300 responses over both hemispheres relative to within-category deviants, suggesting categorical perception of tones at both pre-attentive and attentional stages of processing. In contrast, native English speakers and Mandarin learners did not demonstrate categorical effects. However, learners of Mandarin showed larger P300 responses than the other two groups, suggesting heightened sensitivity to tones and possibly greater attentional resource allocation to tone identification.

This study compared the comprehension of syntactically simple with more complex sentences in Italian–English adult bilinguals and monolingual controls in the presence or absence of sentence-level interference. The task was to identify the agent of the sentence and we primarily examined the accuracy of response. The target sentence was signalled by the gender of the speaker, either a male or a female, and this varied over trials, where the target was spoken in a male voice the distractor was spoken in a female voice and vice versa. In contrast to other work showing a bilingual disadvantage in sentence comprehension under conditions of noise, we show that in this task, where voice permits selection of the target, adult bilingual speakers are in fact better able than their monolingual Italian peers to resist sentence-level interference when comprehension demands are high. Within bilingual speakers we also found that degree of proficiency in English correlated with the ability to resist interference for complex sentences both when the target and distractor were in Italian and when the target was in English and the distractor in Italian.

In the keynote article, “Bilingualism and Cognition”, Valian (2014) has reviewed current research on comparing executive function (EF) in monolingual and bilingual individuals across the lifespan. The conclusion is that there are inconsistent EF advantages from bilingualism and all other cognitive challenging activities primarily because individual differences in these cognitive challenging experiences may collectively attribute to superior EF resulting in inconsistent EF benefit attributable to a single experience. In essence, variability in study participants’ experience and tasks contributes to the inconsistency in the behavioral outcomes observed in monolinguals and bilinguals. Notably, Valian suggests that monolinguals may also engage in other cognitively challenging activities, which have not been accounted for in individual studies, thereby resulting in improved EF similar in magnitude to that related to bilingual experience. Although it was not specified which cognitively challenging activity is more likely to be engaged by monolinguals more than by bilinguals, the question at heart is: is there an EF advantage that can be specifically attributed to bilingual experience? The review addressed in the keynote demonstrates seemingly inconsistent patterns of results. In this commentary, I would like to suggest that, in addition to task measurements, individual bilingual experience is dynamic and multifaceted. Moreover, bilingual experience varies in different communities. Consequently, one potential source of explanation for the inconsistent results in between-group EF performances is the characteristics of the bilinguals (and monolinguals) and their social environments included in these studies.

In this study, we explore native and non-native syntactic processing, paying special attention to the language distance factor. To this end, we compared how native speakers of Basque and highly proficient non-native speakers of Basque who are native speakers of Spanish process certain core aspects of Basque syntax. Our results suggest that differences in native versus non-native language processing strongly correlate with language distance: native/non-native processing differences obtain if a syntactic parameter of the non-native grammar diverges from the native grammar. Otherwise, non-native processing will approximate native processing as levels of proficiency increase. We focus on three syntactic parameters: (i) the head parameter, (ii) argument alignment (ergative/accusative), and (iii) verb agreement. The first two diverge in Basque and Spanish, but the third is the same in both languages. Our results reveal that native and non-native processing differs for the diverging syntactic parameters, but not for the convergent one. These findings indicate that language distance has a significant impact in non-native language processing.

The present study examines the influence of language proficiency and language combination on bilingual lexical access using category fluency in 109 healthy speakers. Participants completed a category fluency task in each of their languages in three main categories (animals, clothing, and food), each with two subcategories, as well as a language use questionnaire assessing their proficiency. Five language combinations were examined (Hindi–English, Kannada–English, Mandarin–English, Spanish–English, and Turkish–English). Multivariate analyses of variance revealed that the average number of correct items named in the category fluency task across the three main categories varied across the different groups only in English and not the other language. Further, results showed that language exposure composite (extracted from the questionnaire using a principal component analysis) significantly affected the average number of items named across the three main categories. Overall, these results demonstrate the effects of particular language combinations on bilingual lexical access and provide important insights into the role of proficiency on access.

This article explores the widely documented difficulty with object clitics in the acquisition of French. The study investigates the effects of L1 transfer and processing limitations on the production and comprehension of object clitics in child L2 learners of French with different L1 backgrounds (Chinese, Spanish). The Spanish-speaking learners performed better than Chinese-speaking learners on clitic-related tasks, indicating a facilitative effect of transfer when the L1 also has object clitics. Yet no evidence was found for (negative) transfer of null objects from Chinese to French, as learners consistently rejected interpretations requiring referential null objects on a receptive task. The frequency of Chinese-speaking learners’ object omissions in production was negatively correlated with an independent measure of working memory (backward digit span), consistent with the hypothesis that object clitic omission is affected by processing limitations. These findings are discussed within a psycholinguistic model of syntactic encoding during language production.

This study examined stress processing among Mandarin and Korean second language learners of English and English monolinguals. While both English and Mandarin have contrastive stress at the word-level, Korean does not. Consequently, Mandarin speakers may have an advantage over Korean speakers in English stress processing, even when matched for their general English proficiency. Experiment 1 assessed participants’ stress encoding ability for nonwords in a short-term memory task. Experiment 2 examined the effect of stress in online word recognition in a lexical decision task by manipulating word frequency, stress location, and vowel quality. The results of both experiments support an advantage for English and Mandarin speakers over Korean speakers in stress processing of real words and nonwords. Only Korean speakers’ lexical judgment of nonwords was modulated by word frequency, suggesting that they do not utilize stress in lexical access. Only English speakers’ word recognition was facilitated by vowel quality changes. These results suggest that the abilities of non-native speakers to process stress in their L2 is influenced by the characteristics of the stress systems in their L1.

Spanish [l] is characterized as clear, and is associated with a high second formant (F2) frequency and a large difference between F2 and the first formant (F1) frequencies. In contrast, English [l] is darker (with a lower F2 and a relatively smaller F2–F1 difference) and also exhibits contextual variation due to an allophonic velarization rule that further darkens [l] postvocalically. We aimed to determine if Spanish–English bilingual children evidence these differences productively, in a manner comparable to that of monolinguals, or if they produce an [l] that is intermediate to that of Spanish and English monolinguals. We acoustically analyzed [l] productions of seven Spanish–English bilingual, seven Spanish monolingual, and seven English monolingual children. Results showed that the bilinguals had similar prevocalic F2 and F2–F1 values for [l] in both languages, comparable to those of Spanish monolinguals, but significantly higher than those of English monolinguals. The bilinguals also produced English (but not Spanish) [l] with significantly lower postvocalic F2 and F2–F1 values. We assume that the bilinguals have a merged phonetic category for prevocalic [l] but not postvocalic [l], and further, that they maintain separate grammars, allowing the allophonic velarization rule to apply in English but not Spanish.

We used picture–word interference (PWI) to discover a) whether cross-language activation at the lexical level can yield phonological priming effects when languages do not share phonological representations, and b) whether semantic interference effects occur without articulatory competition. Bimodal bilinguals fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English named pictures in ASL while listening to distractor words that were 1) translation equivalents, 2) phonologically related to the target sign through translation, 3) semantically related, or 4) unrelated. Monolingual speakers named pictures in English. Production of ASL signs was facilitated by words that were phonologically related through translation and by translation equivalents, indicating that cross-language activation spreads from lexical to phonological levels for production. Semantic interference effects were not observed for bimodal bilinguals, providing some support for a post-lexical locus of semantic interference, but which we suggest may instead reflect time course differences in spoken and signed production in the PWI task.

We examine morphosyntactic knowledge of Labrador Inuttitut by Inuit receptive bilinguals (RBs) – heritage speakers who are capable of comprehension, but produce little or no speech. A grammaticality judgment study suggests that RBs possess sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations, though to a lesser degree than fluent bilinguals. Low-proficiency RBs are sensitive only to the most basic grammatical properties. Case omission is most difficult to detect, but morphemes bearing incorrect features (case oversuppliance, number agreement mismatch) or ordered incorrectly (tense and agreement, tense and negation) are easier, and performance on incorrect ordering of morphemes is near target with the core agreement morpheme for all RBs. While receptive bilinguals show patterns of grammatical deficits, they also demonstrate clear knowledge of the basic properties of word structure in Inuttitut. This has implications both for the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and for language revitalization efforts.