This paper compares the development of tense morphology and verb-second in different learner populations. Three groups of Swedish pre-school children are investigated longitudinally; ten L1 children, ten L2 children and ten children diagnosed with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Data was collected twice, with an interval of six months. The results at Time I reveal a significant difference between normally developing L1 children on the one hand and L2 children and children with SLI on the other. The L1 children use verb-second correctly in topicalized declaratives, whereas both L2 children and children with SLI use structures with the verb in third position (XSV structures) as an intermediate step towards verb-second. There is a clear development between the two data collection sessions for the L2 children and the children with SLI, diminishing the difference between them and the unimpaired L1 children. The similarity that is found between L2 children and children with SLI in this study bears important implications for the discussion of the role of transfer in L2 research and for the question of a defective linguistic representation in SLI research.

The demographic changes in the Western world in the last two decades have led to rapid growth in the number of children being raised bilingually, and in many locations they represent a majority of the school population. With this increase in the number of bilingual children, researchers as well as educators and practitioners, face a diagnostic dilemma which arises from similarities in the linguistic manifestations of child second language (L2) acquisition and of Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This dilemma has motivated a new field of research, the study of bilingual children with Specific Language Impairment (BISLI), which aims at disentangling the effects of bilingualism from those of SLI, making use of both models of bilingualism and models of language impairment. The majority of the studies are currently focused on morphosyntax as a key direction of research. The present issue, which originated in papers presented at a scientific workshop funded by the Israel Science Foundation and The Hebrew University's Center for Advanced Study, held in February 2009, aims at broadening this area of research to other linguistic domains.

Subject–verb agreement is a computation that is often difficult to execute perfectly in the first language (L1) and even more difficult to produce skillfully in a second language (L2). In this study, we examine the way in which bilingual speakers complete sentence fragments in a manner that reflects access to both grammatical and conceptual number. In two experiments, we show that bilingual speakers are sensitive to both grammatical and conceptual number in the L1 and grammatical number agreement in the L2. However, only highly proficient bilinguals are also sensitive to conceptual number in the L2. The results suggest that the extent to which speakers are able to exploit conceptual information during speech planning depends on the level of language proficiency.

Questionnaires documenting children's bilingual experience have been used frequently in research on language and cognitive development. However, there has been little investigation of the comparability between these tools. In this review, we (i) provide a list of available questionnaires used to quantify bilingual experience in children; (ii) identify the components of bilingual experience documented across questionnaires; and (iii) discuss the comparability of the measures used to operationalise these components. In doing so, we review 48 questionnaires and identify 32 overarching constructs, manifested as 194 components, and we calculate the frequency with which they are documented. Finally, by focusing on a subset of overarching constructs (language exposure and use, activities, and current language skills), we observe high variability in how they are operationalised across tools. These findings highlight the need for greater transparency in how we document bilingualism and for more comparable measures.

According to recent views of L2-sentence processing, L2-speakers do not predict upcoming information to the same extent as do native speakers. To investigate L2-speakers’ predictive use and integration of syntactic information across clauses, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from advanced L2-learners and native speakers while they read sentences in which the syntactic context did or did not allow noun-ellipsis (Lau, E., Stroud, C., Plesch, S., & Phillips, C. (2006). The role of structural prediction in rapid syntactic analysis. Brain and Language, 98, 74–88.) Both native and L2-speakers were sensitive to the context when integrating words after the potential ellipsis-site. However, native, but not L2-speakers, anticipated the ellipsis, as suggested by an ERP difference between elliptical and non-elliptical contexts preceding the potential ellipsis-site. In addition, L2-learners displayed a late frontal negativity for ungrammaticalities, suggesting differences in repair strategies or resources compared with native speakers.

This paper presents two experiments in the acquisition of the nominal domain in English by Japanese and Spanish second language (L2) learners. The first experiment tests the L2 learners' ability to distinguish between count and mass nouns using a grammaticality judgement task and the second experiment tests learners on different types of definite (based on J. Hawkins's 1978 taxonomy) in count and mass contexts by means of a forced-choice elicitation task. The claim by Chierchia (1998a, b) is that there is a Nominal Mapping Parameter and the three languages discussed in this paper each have a different parametric value. The aim of the paper is to test Japanese and Spanish L2 learners of English to see whether they can reset the parameter to the English setting.

Meuter and Allport (1999) demonstrated greater RT (response time) costs for bilinguals to switch to their first language (L1) from their second language (L2) relative to switching to L2 from L1. Here, analyses of digit naming and simple arithmetic (from 2+2 to 9+9 and from 2×2 to 9×9) by Chinese–English bilinguals demonstrated that these asymmetrical language switching costs can vary with stimulus format (Arabic or Mandarin numerals), and that the asymmetry is observed both with direct retrieval (e.g. naming the digit “8”) and indirect retrieval from the lexicon (e.g. answering “2+6”). Inhibitory processes in language selection entail format- and task-specific skills.

The current study examined automatic activation and semantic influences from the non-target language of different-script bilinguals during visual word processing. Thirty-four Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals and 34 native Hebrew controls performed a semantic relatedness task on visually presented Hebrew word pairs. In one type of critical trials, cognate primes between Arabic and Hebrew preceded related Hebrew target words. In a second type, false-cognate primes preceded Hebrew targets related to the Arabic meaning (but not the Hebrew meaning) of the false-cognate. Although Hebrew orthography is a fully reliable cue of language membership, facilitation on cognate trials and interference on false-cognate trials were observed for Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals. The activation of the non-target language was sufficient to influence participants’ semantic decisions in the target language, demonstrating simultaneous activation of both languages even for different-script bilinguals in a single language context. To discuss the findings we refine existing models of bilingual processing to accommodate different-script bilinguals.

Research has shown that bilinguals can perform similarly, better or poorly on verbal fluency task compared to monolinguals. Verbal fluency data for semantic (animals, fruits and vegetables, and clothing) and letter fluency (F, A, S) were collected from 25 Bengali–English bilinguals and 25 English monolinguals in English. The groups were matched for receptive vocabulary, age, education and non-verbal intelligence. We used a wide range of measures to characterize fluency performance: number of correct, fluency difference score, time-course analysis (1st RT, Sub-RT, initiation, slope), clustering, and switching. Participants completed three executive control measures tapping into inhibitory control, mental-set shifting and working memory. Differences between the groups were significant when executive control demands were higher such as number of correct responses in letter fluency, fluency difference score, Sub-RT, slope and cluster size for letter fluency, such that bilinguals outperform the monolinguals. Stroop performance correlated positively with the slope only for the bilinguals.

Word-initial /s/-consonant clusters do not occur in Spanish. Confronted with such sequences (e.g., in loanwords), Spanish speakers tend to perceive an illusory initial /e/, ‘repairing’ the illicit sequence. In two experiments, both conducted in Spanish with Spanish-sounding nonwords, we ask whether knowledge of English, which has no restriction against this sound sequence, weakens this pattern of perceptual repair in fluent Spanish–English bilinguals, and whether the effects of English depend on language dominance. In both identification and discrimination tasks, bilinguals exhibited weaker perceptual repair effects relative to Spanish monolinguals. This was true even for bilinguals dominant in Spanish, though the weakening was more pronounced for English-dominant bilinguals. These results show that conflicting phonotactic systems can jointly influence bilinguals’ perceptual repair of the acoustic signal in the more restrictive language, even when it is the bilingual's dominant language, suggesting a degree of integration and mutual influence of knowledge between both their languages.

In the visual domain, more than two decades of work has argued for the existence of dual category learning systems. The reflective system uses working memory in an explicit fashion to develop and test rules for classifying. The reflexive system operates by implicitly associating perception with actions that lead to reinforcement. Dual-system models posit that in learning natural categories, learners initially use the reflective system and with practice, transfer control to the reflexive system. The role of reflective and reflexive systems in second language (L2) speech learning has not been systematically examined. In the study reported in this paper, monolingual native speakers of American English were trained to categorize Mandarin tones produced by multiple speakers. Our computational modeling approach demonstrates that learners use reflective and reflexive strategies during tone category learning. Successful learners use speaker-dependent, reflective analysis early in training and reflexive strategies by the end of training. Our results demonstrate that dual-learning systems are operative in L2 speech learning. Critically, learner strategies directly relate to individual differences in successful category learning.

Neighborhood density – the number of words that sound similar to a given word (Luce & Pisoni, 1998) – influences word learning in native English-speaking children and adults (Storkel, 2004; Storkel, Armbruster & Hogan, 2006): novel words with many similar sounding English words (i.e., dense neighborhood) are learned more quickly than novel words with few similar sounding English words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). The present study examined how neighborhood density influences word learning in native English-speaking adults learning Spanish as a foreign language. Students in their third semester of Spanish-language classes learned advanced Spanish words that sounded similar to many known Spanish words (i.e., dense neighborhood) or sounded similar to few known Spanish words (i.e., sparse neighborhood). In three word-learning tasks, performance was better for Spanish words with dense rather than sparse neighborhoods. These results suggest that a similar mechanism may be used to learn new words in a native and a foreign language.

While it is now commonly accepted that simultaneous bilingual children can differentiate their two languages from very early in development, it is still not very well understood how they come to understand that there are two languages in their input. The purpose of this study was to examine how a bilingual child might come to an understanding of the existence of two languages in terms of pragmatic differentiation (use of the appropriate language for the context) and lexical differentiation (use of translation equivalents). Using data from a Portuguese-English bilingual child from 1;0 to 1;6, this study showed that the child showed evidence of pragmatic differentiation before lexical differentiation. If these results are replicated, they suggest that bilingual children's understanding of the appropriate social use of their two languages may lead to an understanding that the translation equivalents in their vocabulary belong to two distinct input languages.

Emotional words are better remembered than neutral words in the first language. Ferré, García, Fraga, Sánchez-Casas and Molero (2010) found this emotional effect also for second language words by using an encoding task focused on emotionality. The aim of the present study was to test whether the same effect can also be observed with encoding tasks not related to emotionality, as has been reported in monolinguals. We tested highly proficient bilinguals of Catalan and Spanish that were dominant in one of these two languages. At the encoding phase, we directed their attention to words’ features other than emotionality (participants had to either rate words’ concreteness or count the number of vowels they had). In both cases, we obtained an advantage for emotional words independently of the language in which they appeared. These results suggest that the emotional effect on memory has the same characteristics in the two languages of a bilingual.

This study investigates the acquisition of grammatical gender in French by German L1 children (age of onset of acquisition (AO) 2;8-4,0). The analysis of spontaneous production data of 24 children gathered longitudinally and a gender assignment test administered to 8 of these children at ages 6;7-8;3 and to 9 children (AO 2,11-3;8) at ages 3;2-5;1 revealed that some of them resembled L1 learners whereas others behaved like adult L2 learners. The turning point is at around AO 3;6. AO is thus a crucial factor determining successive language acquisition.

This study asked whether bilinguals construct a language-independent level of information structure for the sentences that they produce. It reports an experiment in which a Polish–English bilingual and a confederate of the experimenter took turns to describe pictures to each other and to find those pictures in an array. The confederate produced a Polish active, passive, or conjoined noun phrase, or an active sentence with object–verb–subject order (OVS sentence). The participant responded in English, and tended to produce a passive sentence more often after a passive or an OVS sentence than after a conjoined noun phrase or active sentence. Passives and OVS sentences are syntactically unrelated but share information structure, in that both assign emphasis to the patient. We therefore argued that bilinguals construct a language-independent level of information structure during speech.

Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience.

In this paper we show that heritage speakers and returnees are fundamentally different from the majority of adult second language learners with respect to their use of collocations (Laufer & Waldman, 2011). We compare the use of lexical collocations involving yap- “do” and et- “do” among heritage speakers of Turkish in Germany (n = 45) with those found among Turkish returnees (n = 65) and Turkish monolinguals (n = 69). Language use by returnees is an understudied resource although this group can provide crucial insights into the specific language ability of heritage speakers. Results show that returnees who had been back for one year avoid collocations with yap- and use some hypercorrect forms in et-, whilst returnees who had been back for seven years at the time of recording produce collocations that are quantitatively and qualitatively similar to those of monolingual speakers of Turkish. We discuss implications for theories of ultimate attainment and incomplete acquisition in heritage speakers.

Two experiments examine the view that the variation in bilingual short-term memory capacity is determined by differential rates of subvocal rehearsal between the languages. Auditory memory span and articulation time were measured for three bilingual groups who spoke Finnish at home and Swedish at school (FS), and either Finnish (FF) or Swedish (SS) in both the home and the school. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that memory span for words varied in a lawful manner as a function of both articulation time and language dominance for SS and FF. For FS, however, an equivalent memory span between the languages was noted despite a shorter articulation time in Finnish than Swedish. Experiment 2 found that for items with no pre-existing lexical representations (nonwords), articulation time was a more reliable predictor of memory span than language dominance for all three groups. The finding that within-language memory span was greater for short items than long items shows that, ceteris paribus, bilingual short-term memory capacity is sensitive to the effects of word length in both the dominant and non-dominant language. Taken together, these findings moderate the view that bilingual short-term memory capacity is mediated exclusively by subvocal rehearsal and indicate an influential contribution from factors related to language fluency and the strength of lexico-semantic representations.