Situated within the grammatical aspect approach to motion event cognition, this study takes a first step in investigating language and thought in functional multilinguals by studying L1 isiXhosa speakers living in South Africa. IsiXhosa being a non-aspect language, the study investigates how the knowledge and use of additional languages with grammatical aspect influence cognition of endpoint-oriented motion events among L1 isiXhosa speakers. Results from a triads-matching task show that participants who often used aspect languages and had greater exposure to English in primary education were less prone to rely on endpoints when categorising motion events.

Bilinguals have been shown to outperform monolinguals at suppressing task-irrelevant information and on overall speed during cognitive control tasks. Here, monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ performance was compared on two nonlinguistic tasks: a Stroop task (with perceptual Stimulus–Stimulus conflict among stimulus features) and a Simon task (with Stimulus–Response conflict). Across two experiments testing bilinguals with different language profiles, bilinguals showed more efficient Stroop than Simon performance, relative to monolinguals, who showed fewer differences across the two tasks. Findings suggest that bilingualism may engage Stroop-type cognitive control mechanisms more than Simon-type mechanisms, likely due to increased Stimulus–Stimulus conflict during bilingual language processing. Findings are discussed in light of previous research on bilingual Stroop and Simon performance.

We report on object and action picture-naming accuracy in two groups of bilectal speakers in Cyprus, children with typical language development (TLD) and children with specific language impairment (SLI). Object names were overall better retrieved than action names by both groups. Given that comprehension for action names was relatively intact for all children, this finding is taken to be the result of a breakdown at the interface of the semantic lexicon and phonological representations, or access to them. The results complement similar research on English, a minimally inflected language in contrast to Greek. Overall, cross-linguistic word class effects provide strong evidence for the hypothesis that grammatical category is an organizing principle shared across languages. Finally, our results suggest that bilectal children with SLI present with general lexical delay rather than a deficit in verb naming per se.

Research with monolingual children has shown that early efficiency in real-time word recognition predicts later language and cognitive outcomes. In parallel research with young bilingual children, processing ability and vocabulary size are closely related within each language, although not across the two languages. For children in dual-language environments, one source of variation in patterns of language learning is differences in the degree to which they are exposed to each of their languages. In a longitudinal study of Spanish/English bilingual children observed at 30 and 36 months, we asked whether the relative amount of exposure to Spanish vs. English in daily interactions predicts children's relative efficiency in real-time language processing in each language. Moreover, to what extent does early exposure and speed of lexical comprehension predict later expressive and receptive vocabulary outcomes in Spanish vs. English? Results suggest that processing skill and language experience each promote vocabulary development, but also that experience with a particular language provides opportunities for practice in real-time comprehension in that language, sharpening processing skills that are critical for learning.

Here we examined the role of bilingualism on cognitive inhibition using the Stroop Colour Word task. Our hypothesis was that the frequency of use of a second language (L2) in the daily life of successive bilingual individuals impacts the efficiency of their inhibitory control mechanism. Thirty-three highly proficient successive French–German bilinguals, living either in a French or in a German linguistic environment, performed a Stroop task on both French and German words. Moreover, 31 French monolingual individuals were also tested with French words. We showed that the bilingual advantage was (i) reinforced by the use of a third language, and (ii) modulated by the duration of immersion in a second language environment. This suggests that top–down inhibitory control is most involved at the beginning of immersion. Taken together, the present findings lend support to the psycholinguistic models of bilingual language processing that postulate that top–down active inhibition is involved in language control.

While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ɟʝ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ʝ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 Spanish listeners, on the other hand, only benefit from the palatal alternation in the second task. These results suggest that while Spanish L2 learners benefit from the presence of the alternation in linear phonotactic terms, this benefit does not carry over to a more abstract segmentation task.

Little is known about the acquisition of phonology in children learning a second language before the age of four. The study of Mandarin children's early learning of English coda consonants is of particular interest because of the different syllable structures permitted in the two languages. Using an elicited imitation task, this study explored the acquisition of coda consonants and related phrase-final lengthening in twelve three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children exposed to Australian English at preschool. Performance was good on /t/ and /s/ codas, but worse on the phonologically and morphologically more complex /ts/ coda. Although /n/ is one of the few codas permitted in Mandarin, both perceptual and acoustic analysis revealed surprisingly poor performance, suggesting possible L1 Mandarin effects. As expected, longer exposure to English resulted in better coda production. The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms underlying L2 phonological and morphological acquisition in early child second language learners (ECL2).

This paper contributes to current investigations of the nature of babbling in infants raised bilingually by analyzing the babbling of a child raised in a Spanish–English environment. Examination of syllable structure shows the expected preponderance of open syllables in both language contexts while other phenomena point to important differences dependent on language context. While some of the differences relate to general features of the input languages, others coincide with individual features of the parents’ input. These results offer some evidence of distinct babbling according to language context and suggest a possible influence of the type of input.

Cross-linguistic influence (CLI) has been claimed to occur under the conditions of structural overlap, interfacing, syntactic complexity and language dominance. This study tested adjective placement in the Italian of 19 adult German–Italian simultaneous bilinguals, comparing naturalistic and experimental data. The results show no CLI from German, although the conditions for CLI are given. Instead, bilingual adults tend to overuse a structure that is unique to Italian, unlike bilingual children in previous studies. However, they do so only in the experimental data. In order to account for this, I introduce the concept of cross-linguistic overcorrection in contrast to cross-linguistic influence.

Predictors and control variables were not distinguished in Tables 4–8 of the paper by Lee, Lu and Garnsey (2013). The corrected tables are provided below. The authors apologize for these errors.

The language history questionnaire (LHQ) is an important tool for assessing the linguistic background of bilinguals or second language learners and for generating self-reported proficiency in multiple languages. Previously we developed a generic LHQ based on the most commonly asked questions in published studies (Li, Sepanski & Zhao, 2006). Here we report a new web-based interface (LHQ 2.0) that has more flexibility in functionality, more accuracy in data recording, and more privacy for users and data. LHQ 2.0 achieves flexibility, accuracy, and privacy by using dynamic web-design features for enhanced data collection. It allows investigators to dynamically construct individualized LHQs on the fly and allows participants to complete the LHQ online in multiple languages. Investigators can download and delete the LHQ results and update their user and experiment information on the web. Privacy issues are handled through the online assignment of a unique ID number for each study and password-protected access to data.