This study investigated the unresolved issue of potential sources of heritage language attrition. To test contributing effects of three learner variables – age of second language acquisition, length of residence, and language input – on heritage children's lexical retrieval accuracy and speed, we conducted a real-time word naming task with 68 children (age 11–14 years) living in South Korea who spoke either Chinese or Russian as a heritage language. Results of regression analyses showed that the participants were less accurate and slower in naming target words in their heritage language as their length of residence in Korea and the amount of Korean input increased. The age of Korean acquisition did not significantly influence their performance. These findings support the claim that heritage speakers’ language experience is a more reliable predictor of first language attrition than age of acquisition. We discuss these findings in light of different approaches to explaining language attrition.

The study examined whether false-cognates, overlapping in form but not meaning across languages, are easier to learn due to form overlap, or more difficult to learn due to meaning competition, compared to unambiguous control and cognate words. Fifty-four native Hebrew speakers learned 14 cognates, 14 false-cognates, and 28 control Arabic words in one session. Cognates were learned better than control items. There was no overall difference in learning false-cognates relative to controls, but individuals with higher phonological short-term memory, or with lower L1 verbal fluency, did exhibit a false-cognate learning-advantage. For these individuals, form overlap was more influential than meaning competition. Lexical decisions to Hebrew words following Arabic learning were slower for false-cognates than controls, indicative of backward influences. The findings reveal the influence of prior knowledge on learning and processing, and highlight the importance of jointly considering item-based and learner-based characteristics during the initial stages of vocabulary learning.

This longitudinal study examined the influence of child-specific and environmental factors on the development of English receptive vocabulary and grammar by two groups of Danish children: Early Starters (ES) and Late Starters (LS). Age of onset, gender, language aptitude and SES significantly predicted both outcome measures. English competence beliefs (ECB) were positively related to L2 proficiency but only for children with low foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), suggesting a dynamic relationship between ECB and FLCA. Extramural audiovisual viewing and reading played a differential role for ES vs. LS whereas extramural English speaking significantly interacted with gender. Finally, child-specific factors explained more of the variance in English proficiency than environmental factors. This finding, which contradicts results obtained in instructed settings (e.g., Sun, Steinkrauss, Tendeiro & de Bot, 2016) but parallels those in naturalistic settings (e.g., Paradis, 2011), supports the special status of English in countries with a high degree of informal contact with English.

The present study provides insight into cross-language activation in hearing bimodal bilinguals by (1) examining co-activation of spoken words during processing of signs by hearing bimodal bilingual users of Dutch (their L1) and Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT; late learners) and (2) investigating the contribution of mouthings to bimodal cross-language activation. NGT signs were presented with or without mouthings in two sign-picture verification experiments. In both experiments the phonological relation (unrelated, cohort overlap or final rhyme overlap) between the Dutch translation equivalents of the NGT signs and pictures was manipulated. Across both experiments, the results showed slower responses for sign-picture pairs with final rhyme overlap relative to phonologically unrelated sign-picture pairs, indicating co-activation of the spoken language during sign processing, but no significant effect for sign-picture pairs with cohort overlap in Dutch. In addition, co-activation was not affected by the presence or absence of mouthings.

Interpreters are hypothesized to anticipate the source language (SL) in comprehension and the target language (TL) in production to facilitate timely delivery. In two experiments, we examined whether interpreters make more predictions in SL comprehension in consecutive interpreting than in regular language comprehension and whether such enhanced prediction (if any) is constrained by cognitive resources. Participants were quicker at reading a predictable versus unpredictable critical word and/or following words (e.g., Without the sunglasses/hat, the sun will hurt your eyes on the beach, where eyes is the critical word), and the prediction effect was larger when they read to later interpret (into Chinese) than to later recall. The enhanced prediction in reading to interpret disappeared when the cognitive load was high, suggesting that SL prediction in interpreting requires cognitive resources. Our findings suggest that, when cognitive resources allow, interpreters engage in enhanced linguistic prediction in SL comprehension to facilitate the delivery of interpreting.

Differential object marking (DOM) is an area of vulnerability in adult heritage speakers. This study traces such vulnerability to childhood by examining Turkish DOM in child Turkish heritage speakers in the U.S and the parental generation, who are the main input providers. Twenty first-generation immigrants, 20 adult and 20 child (aged 7–14) Turkish heritage speakers, and the monolingual group including 20 Turkish-speaking adults, 20 7–14-year-old and 20 3–6-year-old Turkish-speaking children in Turkey completed a story retelling task and a picture selection task. Results showed that the first-generation immigrants patterned with the monolingual adults. However, the heritage speakers (children and adults) omitted DOM in both tasks, showing more variable performance than the monolingual groups. These findings suggest that instability of DOM in heritage grammars is more likely due to insufficient input in the early years of heritage language development than to changes in parental input or attrition in later years.

In the present meta-analysis, we investigated the robustness and the magnitude of the Foreign Language Effect (FLE) – that is, the putative effect of language context (native versus foreign language) on decision-making. We also investigated whether the FLE is moderated by language experience – measured by second language age of acquisition and proficiency – or by methodological choices – the types of decision problems adopted, the presentation modality of the tasks administered, and the perspective in which problems are framed. Our results showed a reliable FLE, which was not moderated by language experience or methodological choices. We discuss our findings in relation to available theories of FLE, and indicate possible future directions to improve our understanding of the interplay between bilingualism and decision-making.

This study reports data on 47 Tigrinya speaking Eritrean refugees learning French. L2 French proficiency is assessed through the placement test Ev@lang, a standardized grammar test, and fine corpus analyses. Analysis of individual factors shows that, whereas school education, number of years in Switzerland, and French classes attended play no role in proficiency, age penalizes learning and, critically, multilingualism facilitates it. Corpus analyses replicate difficulties commonly reported in the literature with root infinitives, determiner omission and gender errors. Productions also depart from previous reports as we observed a low rate of subject drop, a high rate of gender errors involving animate nouns, and the overuse of the feminine, in line with Tigrinya grammar. Finally, our data provide preliminary evidence of the validity of Ev@lang in assessing French proficiency in refugees, an issue which is becoming critical with the increased role of language skills in European asylum policies.

In multilingual people, semantic knowledge is predominantly shared across languages. Providing semantic-focused treatment to people with aphasia has been posited to strengthen connectivity within association cortices that subserve semantic knowledge. In multilingual people, such treatment should result in within- and cross-language generalisation to all languages, although not equally. We investigated treatment effects in two multilingual participants with aphasia who received verb-based semantic treatment in two pre-stroke highly proficient languages. We compared within- and cross-language generalisation patterns across languages, finding within- and cross-language generalisation after treatment in the less-impaired, pre-morbidly more-proficient first-acquired language (L1). This observation supports the theory that connectivity is greater between the lexicon of a pre-morbidly more-proficient L1 and the shared semantic system than the lexicon of a pre-morbidly less-proficient later-acquired language. Our findings of within- and cross-language generalisation patterns could also be explained by both the Competing Mechanisms Theory and the theory of lingering suppression.

Previous research has shown that the direction of the cognate facilitation effect (CFE) can disappear if identical cognate words are removed from the stimulus list while keeping task requirements constant (Comesaña, Ferré, Romero, Guasch, Soares & García-Chico, 2015). These results do not fit well with leading computational models of bilingual word recognition (BIA+, Multilink), according to which there are no top-down influences at early stages of word processing. Influences would be post-lexical in nature and would result from competition at the response level. This study aimed to examine this issue by manipulating stimulus list composition and examining its impact on cognate word recognition. We varied the proportion of identical cognates in the experimental lists with four ratios of identical vs. non-identical cognates (50-50; 25-75; 12-88, and 0-100, respectively). Results showed that the CFE gradually decreases as the proportion of identical cognates also decreases. These findings cannot be explained by mechanisms of response competition, but instead seem to imply a dynamic and language-specific top-down regulation of lexical activation.

We examined the effect of word stress position on bilingual auditory cognate processing. Turkish–Dutch early bilinguals who are dominant in their L2 (Dutch) performed an auditory lexical decision task in Turkish or Dutch. While Dutch has variable word stress, with a tendency for penultimate stress, stress in Turkish is mostly predictable and usually falls on the ultimate syllable. Our tasks included two-syllable cognates with penultimate stress in both languages, ultimate stress in both languages, or ultimate stress in Turkish and penultimate stress in Dutch. Some cognate facilitation effects arose in Dutch, while inhibition was found in Turkish. Cognates with ultimate stress were processed faster than cognates with penultimate stress, in both languages. This shows that in Turkish–Dutch early bilinguals, cognate processing depends on Turkish stress position, although Dutch is dominant. Together, the findings support the view that cognates have separate, though linked representations.

To assess the presence of cross-linguistic influence, this study compared the processing of Dutch sentences by English–Dutch and German–Dutch bilingual and Dutch monolingual children in a self-paced listening task. We combined insights from studies on child bilingualism and adult second language acquisition. Sentence structures showing partial overlap between languages were investigated (long passives), as well as structures with complete or no overlap (verb second and verb third sentences). We found evidence for syntactic co-activation of overlapping structures in the form of inhibition during listening. Syntactic, and possibly lexical, overlap between languages, and language dominance modulated effects. In particular, online cross-linguistic influence was visible only in the German–Dutch group. Furthermore, effects were most pronounced when structures partially overlapped and were absent in non-overlapping structures. Effects of online cross-linguistic influence became stronger the more German-dominant children were. Our results indicate that syntactic co-activation across languages affects sentence processing in bilingual children.

This study examined whether bilinguals automatically activate lexical options from both of their languages when performing a picture matching task in their dominant language (L1) by using event related potentials. English–French bilinguals and English monolinguals performed a picture-spoken word matching task with three conditions: match (BEACH-“beach”), unrelated mismatch (BEACH-“tack”), and L2 onset competitor mismatch (BEACH-“plaid”; plaid sounds like plage, the French word for beach). Critically, bilinguals, but not monolinguals, showed reduced N400s for L2-cohort vs. unrelated mismatches. The results provide clear evidence that when bilinguals identify pictures, they automatically activate lexical options from both languages, even when expecting oral input from only their dominant language. N400 attenuation suggests bilinguals activate but do not expect L2 lexical options.