Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1

Language & Communication

 Outline
1. What is bilingualism?
2. Processing and acquiring a second language
3. Bilingual Language Use & Adaptation

1.
 What is bilingualism?
- Bilingualism is the state of having the mental representation (knowledge) of two or more language for the purposes of
understanding and/or speaking these languages.
 Definitions might vary based on experiences that determine this
 Native bilinguals are those that have two native languages, also called simultaneous bilinguals.
 Some bilinguals are more proficient in the L2 than their L1.
 Some bilinguals become bilingual later in life. After the age of 4* and beyond a person is considered a second
language learner.

- What have we learned in the recent research?

 Recent neuroscience evidence has called into question the presence of hard constraints on L2 learning;
proficiency in L2 may be more important than age of acquisition (e.g., Abutalebi et al., 2005; Steinhauer et al.,
2009).
 Bilinguals may not be monolingual-like in their native language, but that does not make them special as
language users. Instead, it suggests that the native language is open to change and to the influence of the L2
(e.g., Ameel et al., 2009)
 Bilingualism, and L2 acquisition, provide a lens for researchers to examine aspects of the underlying cognitive
architecture that may be obscured by native language skill when investigating performance in the
native/dominant language only.
 We would not know these changes to the native language occur unless there was another language.
 Bilingualism is a tool for cognitive scientists and cognitive neuroscientists

- A(n important) point on terminology:

 Bilinguals vs Second Language (L2) Learners

 We adopt a broad definition of bilingualism to include all individuals who use more than one
language regularly.
 We distinguish bilingual groups with respect to their proficiency in the L2, their relative language
dominance, the age of acquisition, and the degree to which the context of language use supports
each of the two languages.

 Bilingual Profile

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication
2.
 Processes underlying L2 processing?
- Number of contemporary theories/hypotheses- we’ll focus on two
- Shallow Structure Hypothesis (e.g. Clahsen & Felser, 2006)
- Declarative-Procedural model (Paradis, 2004 Ullman, 2001;2016)

 Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH)

- L2 Learners of a language- differing processing strategy to native speakers
 Thus, L2 speakers- difficulty computing more complex syntactic
 Reliance on ‘shallow’ representations- e.g. semantics/pragmatics to comprehend sentences
 Instead of ‘deep’ structural features
 Use of multiple methods to process?

 Evidence for the SSH?

- Slower reading times for L2 learners than native speakers in garden-path sentence processing (e.g. Roberts & Felser,
2011)

 Declarative Procedural Model

- Different memory systems for language
- Declarative – knowledge of “what”
• E.g. whole word form (e.g. worked)
- Procedural- knowledge of underlying rules
• E.g. underlying rules (work + ‘ed’)

- Changes w/proficiency?
• Early L2 learners- reliance on declarative
• Longer use/increased proficiency- procedural

 Evidence for Declarative/Procedural?

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication
 Does bilingual language acquisition mean slower language acquisition?
- YES:
• development of vocabulary and grammar in generally
slower than in monolinguals (e.g. Hoff et al., 2012)
- …and NO:
• comparable for total vocabulary (Hoff et al., 2012)
• within monolingual normal range if input at least 60%
(Cattani et al., 2014)

 Same for all ages?

- In short, no!
• Earlier acquired L2- aspects of language more ‘native-like’
• Greater divergence from monolingual/native speaking norm w/later L2 AoA (e.g. Weber-Fox & Neville, 1996)

- Cause for this divergence?

• Internal (neurobiological/maturational effects)?
• External (e.g. quantity/quality of input) ?

 External Factors
- Quantity and quality of the input
- Quantity:
- Length of exposure to each language at home (how many hours per language)
- LoE to L1 or L2 at school, weekends, holidays
- Number of different speakers of L1 and L2 interacting with the child
- Older siblings?
- Literacy related activities (from preschool age)

 Effects of maturational state on acquisition of English as second language

Johnson and Newport (1989)

- Critical Period Hypothesis

 Exercise hypothesis: “Early in life, humans have a superior capacity for acquiring languages. If the capacity is
not exercised during this time, it will disappear or decline with maturation. If the capacity is exercised,
however, further language learning abilities will remain intact throughout life.”

 Maturational state hypothesis: “Early in life, humans have a superior capacity for acquiring languages. This
capacity disappears or declines with maturation.

- Johnson and Newport (1989)

 Tested English proficiency in native Korean and Chinese speakers who had arrived in the US between ages 3
and 39
 grammaticality judgment task (variety of structures of English grammar (morphology and syntax))

 Johnson and Newport (1989): results

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication
 Maturational Constraints?

- Weber-Fox and Neville (1996)- later AoA shows slower processing speeds, and qualitatively different processing
patterns (ERPs)

 But… is it maturational?

 So, is there a critical period?

- Maybe?
- Language difference do exist between early (childhood) acquired bilinguals and later-acquired bilinguals
- Likely not due to maturational (neural/biological) constraints
 Possibly due to a variety of other mitigating factors,
e.g., duration of exposure, quantity/quality of input, etc.

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication
3.
 Bilingual Language use
- How do the mind and brain accommodate the presence of two languages? What does that tell us that we would not
know if we studied only monolingual speakers?

- The bilingual is a mental juggler:

 Both languages are active regardless of the requirement to use one language alone
- How does a bilingual select a given language to be used at any moment?

- Current research demonstrates that both of a bilingual’s languages are active regardless of the intention or
requirement to use one language alone.
- The parallel activity of the two languages is hypothesized to produce competition.
- Skilled bilinguals rarely make the error of speaking the wrong language yet they often code switch with other similar
bilinguals in the middle of a sentence, suggesting that they possess an exquisite mechanism of cognitive control.
- A life of resolving cross-language competition appears to confer a range of positive consequences for cognition and
changes to the brain networks that reflect the way in which control mechanisms are engaged.

- How is cross-language competition in speech planning resolved?

- Two general alternatives:
1. Bilinguals develop skill in selectively attending to the critical information that signals language status
2. Bilinguals learn to inhibit irrelevant information once it has been activated.
- NB- these alternatives are probably NOT mutually exclusive
- Speech production may be the critical
juggling skill because only in speaking is
there a requirement to select a single
alternative among activated candidates.

Language overlap

 Mind/brain adaptation to bilingualism

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication

 What do these adaptations do, exactly?

- Cognitive benefits to executive functions and attention enable bilinguals to (see e.g. Bialystok 2009; Kroll 2013):
 Ignore irrelevant information
 Resolve conflict among competing alternatives
 Minimize costs associated with task switching
 Measurable increase in creativity areas of the brain

 Executive Function tasks: the Simon Task

Bilingualism seems to correlate with

slower decline in mental acuity; it has an
over-the-lifespan effect in for natural
decline.

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication

 Functional organization- similar performance, but less effort? (Abutalebi et al., 2012)

 Bilingualism and brain structure (Mechelli et al., 2004)

- Bilinguals greater GM volume than monolinguals in IPL (a)

- Within bilinguals- GM volume in IPL correlates with:
 proficiency in L2 (b)
 Age of Acquisition (AoA) (c)
- Specific language experiences affect region differently

 Bilingualism and white matter (Pliatsikas et al., 2015)

Bilinguals found to have higher white matter integrity than monolinguals in

several major tracts (corpus callosum, IFOF, UF, SLF)

 Inconsistencies in findings- where to go?

- HOWEVER- Inconsistency across studies regarding:

 Where (brain) adaptations take place
 How these adaptations manifest
 Direction/latency of effects
 Whether effects manifest behaviorally (e.g. Paap et al., 2015)
- Behavioral evidence differences- Debate over whether bilingualism leads to adaptations
in executive functions
- Underlying variance (language) should be considered? (Abutalebi & Green, 2016; Grundy
et al., 2017; Pliatsikas, 2019; Stocco et al., 2014)

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication
 ‘Different’ bilinguals- Similarities in adaptation

 Context determines use?

- two languages used throughout (childhood, adolescence, adulthood) at home and school
- one language used exclusively at home and the second one began in school age
- two languages at home, one at school
- one (or more) language at home and a different one at school
- one language at home and school and an additional one in adulthood…

 Language use and

mind/brain adaptations- a
gradient?

 Summary
- Bilingualism- mental representation of two or more languages for purposes of understanding and/or speaking
- A complex experience with a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic trajectories outcome
 Likely conditioned by several factors
- Bilingual adaptations stem from juggling two different languages in mind
 Both brain and cognitive function
 Types of experience likely govern this

Live Lecture

- Picture Naming Across Languages

 lack of facilitation of translation equivalents probably due to inhibition of other language/ translation equivalents
 It is not quite clear to which degree translation equivalents are activated
Klaus et al. (2018): L2
(non-dominant) language
can be activated up to
phonological level in
lexical retrieval for speech
production
 Auditory picture-word
interference paradigm:
distractors with same
phonological start slow
down picture naming

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Week 11: Lecture 10 Bilingualism Year 2, Sem 1
Language & Communication

- Evidence for Declarative/Procedural:

Pliatsikas et al. (2014)
 Right cerebellum involved in processing of regular morphology (English past tense verbs)
 RM = regular morphology
 IM = irregular morphology
 Blue bars: L2 learners, brown bars: native speakers
 (f)MRI evidence for language processing in similarities of L2 speakers and native speakers
 L2-immersed bilinguals show similar neural substrates to L2 processing as native speakers
Tanner et al. (2013)
 EEG evidence- processing in a similar way to native speakers in adult L2 acquisition,
 However, processing dependents on proficiency of L2
- Definition of bilingualism (who can be considered bilingual?
 ‘bilingualism’ is typically defined on the basis of verbal competence
 There are interesting consequences on cognitive control for bimodal (sign language/spoken language) bilinguals.
Executive functions seems not be enhanced in these speakers (Emmorey et al., 2008) due to distinct motor and
perceptual systems (unimodal bilinguals faster in Flanker task than bimodal bilinguals and monolinguals, with the
latter two not different from each other)

- Bilingualism & Vocabulary Size

 Vocabulary in language A, vocabulary in language B
> These are often smaller than that of a monolingual speaker, depending on language usage and experience
 Total vocabulary = vocabulary A + vocabulary B
> Total vocabulary is comparable to monolingual speakers
- Bilingual Profile
 Socio-economic status (SES) does not affect the bilingualism status of a person, but it is part of the profile of a
person.
 SES is important when comparing monolingual and bilingual speakers (so is educational status).