This paper investigates the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in L2 Spanish by English and Arabic speakers to understand the role of previous linguistic knowledge and Universal Grammar on the one hand, and the relationship between grammatical knowledge and its use in real-time, on the other. An oral production task and an on-line self-paced grammaticality judgment task were analyzed. Results indicated that the acquisition of oblique relative clauses is a problematic area for L2 learners. Divergent results compared to native speakers in production and grammatical intuitions were found; however, L2 reading time data showed the same real-time effects that native speakers had, suggesting that the problems with this construction are not necessarily linked to processing deficits. These results are interpreted as evidence for the ability to apply universal processing principles in a second language, and the relative independence of the processing domain and the production system.

We tested the predictions of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) to examine how children map novel words to concepts during early stages of L2 learning. Fifth grade Dutch L2 learners with 8 months of English instruction performed a translation recognition task followed by translation production in both directions. The children were already sensitive to L2 word meaning in translation recognition, showing longer RTs and lower accuracies for semantically related than semantically unrelated word pairs. In translation production, they were faster in backward than forward direction as predicted by the RHM. Critically, these children had learned L2 words in contexts enriched by pictures and listening/speaking exercises. Depending on the task, Dutch beginning L2 learners exploit conceptual information during L2 processing and map L2 word-forms to concepts. This study also contributes to accumulating evidence that manner of L2 instruction may majorly impact the activation of lexical and conceptual information during translation.

Interest in third language (L3) acquisition has increased exponentially in recent years, due to its potential to inform long-lasting debates in theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics. From the very beginning, researchers investigating child and adult L3 acquisition have considered the many diverse cognitive factors that constrain and condition the initial state and development of newly acquired languages, and their models have duly evolved to incorporate insights from the most recent findings in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and cognitive psychology. The articles in this Special Issue of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, in dealing with issues such as age of acquisition, attrition, relearning, cognitive economy or the reliance on different memory systems – to name but a few – provide an accurate portrayal of current inquiry in the field, and are a particularly fine example of how instrumental research in language acquisition and other cognitive domains can be to each other.

Topics in psycholinguistics and the neurocognition of language rarely attract the attention of journalists or the general public. One topic that has done so, however, is the potential benefits of bilingualism for general cognitive functioning and development, and as a precaution against cognitive decline in old age. Sensational claims have been made in the public domain, mostly by journalists and politicians. Recently (September 4, 2014) The Guardian reported that “learning a foreign language can increase the size of your brain”, and Michael Gove, the UK's previous Education Secretary, noted in an interview with The Guardian (September 30, 2011) that “learning languages makes you smarter”. The present issue of BLC addresses these topics by providing a state-of-the-art overview of theoretical and experimental research on the role of bilingualism for cognition in children and adults.

While research on third language (L3) and multilingualism has recently shown remarkable growth, the fundamental question of what makes trilingualism special compared to bilingualism, and indeed monolingualism, continues to be evaded. In this contribution we consider whether there is such a thing as a true monolingual, and if there is a difference between dialects, styles, registers and languages. While linguistic and psycholinguistic studies suggest differences in the processing of a third, compared to the first or second language, neurolinguistic research has shown that generally the same areas of the brain are activated during language use in proficient multilinguals. It is concluded that while from traditional linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives there are grounds to differentiate monolingual, bilingual and multilingual processing, a more dynamic perspective on language processing in which development over time is the core issue, leads to a questioning of the notion of languages as separate entities in the brain.

The relation between bilingualism and cognition is informative about the connection between language and mind. From the perspective of language, the question is how bilingualism might help or hinder cognition – narrowly interpreted here as executive function. From the perspective of higher cognition, the question is what kinds of experiences improve executive function. Reported cognitive benefits from bilingualism range from none to substantial as a function of age, type of bilingualism (e.g., life-long balanced vs later-onset or infrequent use of the other language), syntactic relation between the two languages, socio-economic and immigrant status, task, and laboratory. To understand the variability and inconsistencies in results with bilingualism, I analyze concepts of executive function and cognitive reserve and examine the range of factors (such as active video game playing, education, musical training, and aerobic exercise) that are known to correlate with or to improve executive function. I suggest that a) “executive function” is a complex set of cognitive processes, the components of which are sometimes minimally correlated with each other, depending on the task; b) bilingualism is inconsistently correlated with superior executive function and delayed onset of dementia; c) all speakers (mono- or bilingual) have non-linguistic ways of improving executive function; and d) benefits from bilingualism – and all cognitively challenging activities – are inconsistent because individuals vary in the number and kinds of experiences they have that promote superior executive function.

A novel combination of several experimental and non-experimental paradigms was applied to explore initial stages of incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) during reading in German as a second language (L2). The results show that syntactic complexity of the context positively affects incidental acquisition of new words, triggering the learner's shift of attention from the text level to the word level. A subsequent semantic priming task revealed that the new words establish associations with semantically related representations in the L2 mental lexicon after just three previous occurrences and without any consolidation period. The semantic inhibition effect for the new words (contrary to semantic facilitation for known L2 words), however, indicates that the memory traces of the new semantic representation are still very weak and that their retrieval is probably hindered by stronger semantically related representations that have much lower activation thresholds and higher potential for being selected.

In two lexical decision experiments, we investigated how sentence language affects the bilingual's recognition of target words from the same or a different language. Dutch–English bilinguals read Dutch (L1) or English (L2) sentences, presented word by word, followed by English (Experiment 1) or Dutch (Experiment 2) target words. Targets were Dutch–English cognates or non-cognates in isolation or preceded by sentences providing a high or a low semantic constraint. English cognates were facilitated irrespective of whether they were preceded by high or low constraining English sentences (no language switch) or Dutch sentences (switch). For Dutch cognates, inhibition effects arose in low constraining sentences (irrespective of Dutch or English) and in English (switch) sentences (irrespective of semantic constraint). Thus, under mixed language conditions, sentence constraint modulates target word processing but does not always completely eliminate cross-linguistic effects. The results are interpreted in a BIA+ model that extends monolingual views on sentence comprehension.

The first part of this paper reviews research evidence for typological similarity and/or L2 status as determinants of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in multilingual lexical production. The second part presents a model of vocabulary acquisition as a framework to explain CLI at the levels of form, (syntactic) frame, and meaning, as well as some of the developmental changes that have been reported for CLI patterns in relation to L3 learners’ proficiency. It is suggested that these patterns can be related to default processes and stages involved in the acquisition of individual word forms and their integration into networks of existing lexical triads, as described in the Parasitic Model of vocabulary acquisition. The third part of this paper points to research into the complexity and non-linearity of multilingual lexical development and the need to learn more about it.

In everyday communication, speakers make use of a variety of contextual and gestural cues to modulate the meaning of an utterance. Young children have difficulty in integrating multiple communicative cues when some of them have to be interpreted differently depending on other co-occurring cues. However, bilingual children, who regularly experience communicative challenges that demand greater attention and flexibility, may be more adept in integrating multiple cues to understand a speaker's communicative intent. We replicated Nurmsoo and Bloom's (2008) procedure with three-year-old monolingual and bilingual children using a procedure in which they saw two novel objects while the experimenter could see only one. The experimenter looked at the object she could see and said either “There's the [novel-word!]” or “Where's the [novel-word]?”. Compared to monolinguals, bilingual preschoolers were better able to integrate the semantics of “where”, perceptual access of the experimenter, and the nonlinguistic context of the game to successfully differentiate the speaker's communicative intent.

The present study explored the influence of language switching on both comprehension (utilizing a picture-sentence matching procedure) and word-level processing (utilizing eye movement registration) in reading simple German and English sentences. Language sequence was unpredictable and contained language switches (subsequent sentence in a different language) and language repetitions (subsequent sentence in the same language). The results revealed a substantial decrease of comprehension following language switches (with greater switch costs in L1 than in L2), likely indicating relatively long-lasting, endogenous inhibition processes affecting higher-level text integration. In contrast, there were comparatively minor and transient effects on eye movements (in terms of altered skipping probabilities and gaze durations) that were restricted to the initial words within a sentence, presumably representing short-lasting exogenous (stimulus-driven) activation effects after language switches (with greater switch costs in L2 than in L1). Overall, the results are in line with predictions from recent interactive-activation frameworks of bilingual language processing.

At the outset of her article Valian (2014) advocates for the existence of an effect of bilingualism on executive control (EC). She is commended for being very clear about her position. She argues that: “There is a benefit of bilingualism for executive function, but that benefit competes with other benefits that both mono- and bilinguals have to varying degrees. Depending on the composition of each group in any given experiment, the other benefits may be more plentiful in the monolingual than bilingual group (or sufficiently plentiful in both groups), so that the benefits of bilingualism are invisible. This is the possibility that I favor.”

Marking new and given constituents requires speakers to use morphosyntactic and phonological cues within a discourse context. The current study uses a dynamic localization paradigm whereby German and English native speakers, with the other language as a second language (L2), describe constellations of pictures. In each picture a new or reintroduced animal is localized relative to other animals, thereby allowing for control of newness vs. givenness of animals. Participants completed the task in their native language (L1) and L2. English native speakers use predominantly canonical word order and often mark the new object with a falling pitch accent. German native speakers use a given-before-new word order, even when this is non-canonical, and they use a rising pitch accent in non-final position. The results indicate that speakers easily transfer unmarked grammatical structures – both word order and pitch accents – from their L1 to their L2.

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.

Valian (2014) suggests that the messy state of the literature examining the effects of bilingualism on executive functioning (EF) stems from lack of clarity in how EFs are defined and measured, and from lack of control over other factors that can modulate EF. We argue that the lack of clarity in how bilingualism is defined and measured is no less problematic. We focus our commentary on two related issues.

Heritage speakers who re-learn their childhood language in adulthood are an important group for the study of L3 acquisition. Such re-learners have selective advantages over other L2/L3 learners in phonetics/phonology, but lack a global advantage at re-learning the prestige variety of their L1. These learners show asymmetrical transfer effects in morphosyntax: transfer occurs only from the dominant language. Two tentative explanations for this asymmetry are suggested. First, re-learners may deploy the skills acquired in a classroom setting, where they have used only their dominant language. Second, re-learners may implicitly strive to increase the typological distance between their childhood language and the language of classroom instruction. These findings have implications for models of L3/Ln learning: the Cumulative Enhancement Model, the Typological Proximity Model, and the L2 Status Factor Model. The data discussed in this paper are most consistent with the latter model, but they also highlight the significance of the typological distance between languages under acquisition.

The goal of the present study was to identify the cognitive processes that underlie lexical ambiguity resolution in a second language (L2). We examined which cognitive factors predict the efficiency in accessing subordinate meanings of L2 homonyms in a sample of highly-proficient, Spanish–English bilinguals. The predictive ability of individual differences in (1) homonym processing in the L1, (2) working memory capacity and (3) sensitivity to cross-language form overlap were examined. In two experiments, participants were presented with cognate and noncognate homonyms as either a prime in a lexical decision task (Experiment 1) or embedded in a sentence (Experiment 2). In both experiments speed and accuracy in accessing subordinate meanings in the L1 was the strongest predictor of speed and accuracy in accessing subordinate meanings in the L2. Sensitivity to cross-language form overlap predicted performance in lexical decision while working memory capacity predicted processing in sentence comprehension.

This article elucidates the Typological Primacy Model (TPM; Rothman, 2010, 2011, 2013) for the initial stages of adult third language (L3) morphosyntactic transfer, addressing questions that stem from the model and its application. The TPM maintains that structural proximity between the L3 and the L1 and/or the L2 determines L3 transfer. In addition to demonstrating empirical support for the TPM, this article articulates a proposal for how the mind unconsciously determines typological (structural) proximity based on linguistic cues from the L3 input stream used by the parser early on to determine holistic transfer of one previous (the L1 or the L2) system. This articulated version of the TPM is motivated by argumentation appealing to cognitive and linguistic factors. Finally, in line with the general tenets of the TPM, I ponder if and why L3 transfer might obtain differently depending on the type of bilingual (e.g. early vs. late) and proficiency level of bilingualism involved in the L3 process.

Scholars and educators were once concerned that encouraging children to learn more than one language might have adverse cognitive consequences (Darcy, 1953). And for some linguistic capacities (e.g., fluency, vocabulary) this is often true (Bialystok, Craik & Luk, 2012). Unfortunately, such individual costs might discourage governmental policies that are aimed at fostering multi-lingualism, despite its widely acknowledged societal benefits. Peal & Lambert (1962) helped overcome this concern and through her “myth-dispelling” efforts and prodigious empirical output, Bialystok has pushed the pendulum of opinion in the opposite direction.

This study explored whether native speakers of English and non-natives are sensitive to corpus-derived frequency of synonymous adjective-noun collocations (e.g., fatal mistake, awful mistake, and extreme mistake) and whether level of proficiency can influence this sensitivity. Both off-line (typicality rating task) and on-line (eye-movement) measures were employed. Off-line results showed that both natives and non-natives were sensitive to collocational frequency with clearer effects for non-natives as their proficiency increased. On-line, however, proficiency had no effect on sensitivity to frequency; both natives and non-natives showed early sensitivity to collocational frequency (first pass reading time). This on-line sensitivity disappeared later in processing for both groups (total reading time and fixation count). Results are discussed in light of usage-based theories of language acquisition and processing.