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Late-L2 increased reliance on L1 neurocognitive substrates: A comment on Babcock, Stowe, Maloof, Brovetto & Ullman (2012)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2013

MICHEL PARADIS
MICHEL PARADIS*
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor, McGill University
*
Address for correspondence: Michel Paradis, Department of Linguistics, McGill University, michel.paradis@mcgill.ca
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Abstract

Babcok et al. (2012) claim that Paradis (1994, 2004, 2009) argues that the reliance of late L2 learners on L1 neurocognitive mechanisms increases over time across both lexical and grammatical functions, namely for lexical items as well as rule-governed grammatical procedures, when in fact one can find repeated statements to the contrary in the very publications cited by the authors. Actually, Paradis’ main contention over the past 20 years has been that, contrary to grammatical functions, lexical items (as meaning–form relationships) are always of the same nature in L1 and L2 (hence stored declaratively). Thus in L2, only the neurocognitive mechanisms on which aspects of the grammar depend change over time. Consequently, the finding that length of residence (like age of arrival) influences the mechanisms underlying regular (composed), but not irregular (stored) verb forms, is compatible with Paradis’ views, in contradiction to what Babcock et al. are also suggesting.

Keywords

lexical itemlate-learned second languagelexiconvocabularydeclarative memory
Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 704 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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