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.

In this paper we present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are the result of language contact. We then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language (English) to the French of Francophones residing in the province of Ontario in Canada. This discussion shows, notably, how systemic and extra-systemic factors play a role in the emergence of these innovations. We also demonstrate that there are interesting differences in the extent to which these innovations are used across speaker groups and communities, and we argue that such differences suggest that there are thresholds of language contact associated with the emergence, or lack thereof, of particular transfer-induced innovations.

Competition Model studies of second language learners have demonstrated that there is a gradual replacement of first language cues for thematic role assignment by second language cues. The current study introduced two methodological innovations in the investigation of this process. The first was the use of mouse-tracking methodology (Spivey, 2007) to assess the online process of thematic role assignment. The second was the inclusion of both a task with language-specific cues and a task with language-common cues. The results of the language-common cue task indicated that, as English-dominant learners become more balanced between English and Spanish, they rely increasingly on a coalition between the animacy cue and the subject–verb agreement cue. However, the results of the language-specific cue task reveal that learners also rely on the cue of prepositional case marking in Spanish and nominal case marking in English. These results provide evidence of forward transfer, backward transfer, and rapid acquisition of cue-based sentence interpretation strategies in second language learning.

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 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.

Mutual Exclusivity (ME) is a prominent constraint in language acquisition, which guides children to establish one-to-one mappings between words and referents. But how does unfolding experience of multiple-to-one word-meaning mappings in bilingual children's environment affect their understanding of when to use ME and when to accept lexical overlap? Three-to-five-year-old monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children completed two pragmatically distinct tasks, where successful word learning relied on either the default use of ME or the ability to accept overlapping labels. All children could flexibly use ME by following the social-pragmatic directions available in each task. However, linguistic experience shaped the development of ME use, whereby older monolinguals showed a greater reliance on the one-to-one mapping assumption, but older bilinguals showed a greater ability to accept lexical overlap. We suggest that flexible use of ME is thus shaped by pragmatic information present in each communicative interaction and children's individual linguistic experience.

Researchers have speculated that gesture use may be linked to working memory capacity. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the architectures of working memory differ among monolinguals and bilinguals, and to investigate whether individual differences in working memory predict gesture use. Participants relayed a narrative and their gesture production was assessed. Working memory capacity was tested using the Automated Working Memory Assessment (Alloway, 2007). The results provide evidence for different working memory architectures among monolinguals and bilinguals. Additionally, verbal memory significantly predicted iconic gesture use in both language groups, although in slightly different ways. These results are discussed with respect to the functional roles that working memory and gestures serve among monolingual and bilingual populations.

Bilingual advantages in memory flexibility, indexed using a memory generalization task, have been reported (Brito & Barr, 2012; 2014), and the present study examines what factors may influence memory performance. The first experiment examines the role of language similarity; bilingual 18-month-old infants exposed to two similar languages (Spanish–Catalan) or two more different (English–Spanish) languages were tested on a memory generalization task and compared to monolingual 18-month-olds. The second experiment compares performance by trilingual 18-month-olds to monolingual and bilingual infants’ performance from the first experiment. The bilingual advantage in memory flexibility was robust; both bilingual groups outperformed the monolingual groups, with no significant differences between bilingual groups. Interestingly, an advantage was not found for infants exposed to three languages. These findings demonstrate early emerging differences in memory flexibility, and have important implications for our understanding of how early environmental variations shape the trajectory of memory development.

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.

When do the gestures do and do not follow the patterns of the language one speaks? We examined this question by studying 10 Turkish-English bilingual adults (Turkish as L1) in comparison to 10 monolingual English and 10 monolingual Turkish adults as they described motion events either in speech with gesture (co-speech gesture) or only in gesture without speech (silent gesture). All speakers – monolingual and bilingual – showed cross-linguistic differences in co-speech gesture but not in silent gesture. Moreover, bilinguals followed L1 co-speech gesture patterns even when speaking L2, suggesting that acquisition of native-like gesture patterns does not co-occur with the acquisition of native-like speech patterns in bilinguals.

Until now, research on bilingual auditory word recognition has been scarce, and although most studies agree that lexical access is language-nonselective, there is less consensus with respect to the influence of potentially constraining factors. The present study investigated the influence of three possible constraints. We tested whether language nonselectivity is restricted by (a) a sentence context in a second language (L2), (b) the semantic constraint of the sentence, and (c) the native language of the speaker. Dutch–English bilinguals completed an English auditory lexical decision task on the last word of low- and high-constraining sentences. Sentences were pronounced by a native Dutch speaker with English as the L2, or by a native English speaker with Dutch as the L2. Interlingual homophones (e.g., lief “sweet” – leaf /liːf/) were always recognized more slowly than control words. The semantic constraint of the sentence and the native accent of the speaker modulated, but did not eliminate interlingual homophone effects. These results are discussed within language-nonselective models of lexical access in bilingual auditory word recognition.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Language switching experience is assumed to have an effect on domain-general control abilities in bilinguals, but previous studies on the relationship between these two variables have generated mixed results. The present study investigated the effects of bilingual experiences on the interaction between language switching and domain-general control. Thirty-two Dutch–French bilingual young adults executed a bilingual categorisation task to assess their language switching abilities and a Simon task to assess domain-general control. The results show that global response times on the Simon task were correlated to the forward switch cost (from L1 to L2); moreover, interestingly, the forward switch cost was found to be related to recent language exposure but not to the age of second language acquisition. We suggest a monitoring account of language switching to integrate the first finding with previous studies and we interpret the second finding as support for the adaptive control hypothesis.

The present study aims to understand which factors contribute to different patterns of use of referring expressions by bilingual children, by considering the triangulation between language experience and proficiency, executive functions and cross-linguistic effects. We analyze reference use in Greek in the context of a narrative elicitation task as performed by 125 children of different language combinations, including Greek–Albanian, Greek–English and Greek–German. We calculate, for each child, an index of language experience that combines a proficiency measure with background questionnaire information. After identifying the occurrences of underinformative (underspecified) and overinformative (overspecified) referring expressions in the production of each child, we investigate to what extent each pattern of reference use is affected by language experience, cross-linguistic effects and executive functions. The study aims to shed some new light on the nature of overspecification and underspecification in bilingual reference production and, more in general, to model variation in reference use among bilingual children.

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.

We investigated trial-by-trial and cumulative cross-language effects of structural priming and verb bias on L1 and L2 dative syntactic choices (e.g., ‘boy-give-ball-to-girl’ [PO structure] vs. ‘boy-give-girl-ball’ [DO structure]). Dutch-dominant Dutch–English bilinguals listened to a prime sentence with a DO or PO structure in one language and then described a picture in the other language, using verbs that varied in their bias towards the PO or DO structure in Dutch and English. We found effects of cross-language structural priming and verb bias on syntactic choice, some of which were influenced by the participants’ language dominance. In addition, we found cumulative forms of structural priming, leading to cross-language priming effects between experimental blocks. We discuss these results in terms of models on the representation of lexical and syntactic information in bilinguals, and point out how the observed effects can be related to experience-based mechanisms of language use and contact-induced language change.