[lg policy] Book review: The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism

[Harold Schiffman]

The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-207.html

AUTHOR: François Grosjean
AUTHOR: Ping Li
TITLE: The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism
PUBLISHER: Wiley-Blackwell
YEAR: 2013

REVIEWER: Ivan Lombardi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

SUMMARY
In their introductory chapter, the authors state the goal of their book: to
provide a general introduction to the study of bilingualism from a
psycholinguistic point of view. Their intent is explicitly pedagogical and
they aim for accessibility rather than all-inclusive coverage.
Moreover, they highlight the effort to “give the various areas of the
psycholinguistics of bilingualism equal weight” (p. 1). They also present
approaches, methodologies, resources and tools recently applied to studies
in the field.

François Grosjean begins the first chapter ('Bilingualism: A Short
Introduction') with a definition of bilingualism -- and multilingualism --
that will accompany the reader throughout the whole book: “the use of two
or more languages (or dialects) in everyday life” (p. 5). He dispels some
myths about bilinguals (e.g. as natural translators and having no accent in
their languages), and discusses several criteria to describe bilingualism.
He
accounts for fluency, use, time, language history, language loss, in a
dynamic process that he labels 'the wax and wane of languages', then
presents his Complementary Principle (Grosjean 1997) and the notion of
language mode. The last two paragraphs focus on the analysis of monolingual
and bilingual interaction -- with particular emphasis on code-mixing
phenomena --, and to biculturalism, respectively.

The second chapter ('Speech Perception and Comprehension') opens Section I
(Spoken Language Processing). Here Grosjean briefly illustrates the general
process of speech recognition and the creation of a mental representation
of
meaning. He then discusses a centrepiece in the study of bilingualism: the
processing of bilingual speech. Recent studies in psycholinguistics,
reviewed
here, agree that language processing is nonselective most of the time. This
means that, when a bilingual hears input, it does not activate separate
processing mechanisms, but rather the bilingual's language systems
simultaneously. Caution should be exercised, though, as several factors may
influence this process, to the point that it can be even transformed into a
selective process in essence. For instance, when the input contains
elements
that are not shared between the bilingual's two languages,
language-specific
elements are likely to activate only the corresponding language system. He
then reviews the base-language effect and several studies on the
recognition
of code-mixing in bilingual speech. He concludes by presenting Léwy and
Grosjean's “computational model of bilingual lexical access” (p. 46),
BIMOLA
(adapted from Grosjean 2008).

Chapter three ('Speech Production') is the last written by Grosjean, and
closes the first section. Its central aim is to investigate whether
language
production in bilinguals is language selective or nonselective. The chapter
begins with an in-depth analysis of our internal mechanisms that transform
thought into speech. It covers the topic of monolingual speech production
in
bilinguals, providing experimental evidence that “both languages of a
bilingual are jointly activated even in contexts that strongly bias toward
one
of them” (p. 53). As a consequence, Grosjean argues that the two languages
are
activated along a continuum, i.e. they can be less or more stimulated, or
have
diverse activation states, but they actively coexist in a dynamic process.
The
chapter ends with an account of spoken code-switching phenomena, asking
whether they take more processing time than monolingual speech and also
whether they exhibit regularities among languages, speakers and utterances.

Annette M.B. de Groot launches the Section II of the book -- Written
Language
Processing -- with a chapter eloquently entitled 'Reading'. De Groot
introduces basic components of the reading process, from the orthographic
level (the activation of sublexical and lexical memory units), through
corresponding phonological representations, to the recognition of meaning
and
mental representation. One additional step, required to move to meaning at
the
sentence and text level, is parsing. In the end, the information will
trigger
the reader's background knowledge for final comprehension. She reviews a
number of experiments on word recognition in bilingual individuals, mostly
conducted using tests on homographs, neighbours and cognates. Based on the
results, she suggests that bilingual word recognition may be language
nonselective at both the lexical and the phonological activation levels.
Several computational models of visual word recognition are then presented,
most notably BIA, SOPHIA, BIA+. In the end, de Groot summarizes the
findings
of even more studies conducted on the sentence processing; she reports that
monolinguals and bilinguals seem to undergo a similar semantic processing,
while they have a qualitatively different syntactic processing -- based on
the
proficiency in the language.

Rosa M. Manchón provides the final chapter of the Section II: 'Writing'.
Her
goal is to “explore the defining characteristics of bilingual text
production
processes” (p. 100), and she pursues it by initially explaining the general
process of writing (condensed into three phases: planning, formulation,
revision). Later, she compares the writing processes and strategies of
monolinguals and bilinguals, highlighting the results of several studies.
Broadly, it seems that bilingual writers tend to rely more on their first
language and its specific 'higher-order' strategies, even when writing in
another language. This mediator role of the L1 seems to hold also at
advanced
levels of L2 proficiency. Manchón closes by discussing possible transfers
of
writing skills across the bilingual's languages. She agrees with Cumming
(1989) that these skills may be indeed transferable, but she advises the
reader that such analyses of writing performance need to be combined with
further variables, like language proficiency, general writing expertise and
education.

Section III, on Language Acquisition, is introduced by chapter six
('Simultaneous Language Acquisition'). Virginia Yip covers a foundational
topic in psycholinguistics, i.e. the acquisition of two or more languages
in
the early childhood. From the beginning, she adopts the notion of Bilingual
First Language Acquisition (BFLA), to distinguish the peculiar state of
bilingual children and avoid easy stereotypes, like their having two mother
tongues. In fact, she points out that “[i]n the case of simultaneous
acquisition of two languages, neither language can be said to come first,
[...] although in practice a dominant or stronger language can often be
identified” (p. 120). Yip examines several theoretical and methodological
issues, like the quantity of input and its effects on the child's language
acquisition; the natural unbalanced development; the domains of La and Lα
use;
cross-linguistic influences; language pairs, mode, choice, and dominance;
data
collection. In the end, the author shows the stages of language development
in early bilinguals as compared to that of monolingual children. She also
accounts for code-mixing and cross-linguistic influences, which are
reported
in preschool bilinguals. Eventually, she extends the discussion to include
trilinguals, briefly mentioning both quantitative and qualitative
differences
in their language development.

Chapter seven ends the section on language acquisition, and analyses
'Successive Language Acquisition'. Ping Li suggests than, in this case,
“there
is a relatively clear distinction between the learner's first language and
second language” (p. 145) -- the first being most likely native and
dominant,
while the second is added later, and is probably weaker, less used and/or
confined in a domain. The author reviews the effect of age in SLA (second
language acquisition) contexts. He challenges the notion of a critical
period
and lists the main experimental data that has brought researchers to prefer
the term 'age of acquisition' (AoA). L2 AoA does in fact explain some
evidence
in comparisons of early bilinguals with adult language learners, such as
the
discrimination and the production of non-native sounds. Li then discusses
the
influences that L1 and L2 exert on each other in adult learners, such as
the
acquisition of lexicon and its relationship with pre-existing concepts,
cross-language interactions and the acquisition of grammar. He concludes by
confirming that, as stated throughout the book, the interplay between the
two
languages is indeed dynamic, even when they are acquired sequentially.

Chapter eight ('Bilingual Memory') opens Section IV on Cognition and the
Bilingual Brain. De Groot takes into account the long-term declarative
memory,
mainly in the form of semantic memory. She begins with Weinreich's (1953)
traditional description of bilingualism (coordinative, compound,
subordinative) and examines the ongoing chronology of studies and models on
the organisation of the bilingual mental lexicon. She emphasises more
recent
models that do “not represent a word's meaning in a single memory unit [but
assume] 'distributed' representations, where the word's meaning is spread
out
over a number of more elementary conceptual units” (p. 177), such as de
Groot
(1992) and Dong et al. (2005). At a later stage, the author expands to
include
the attainment of semantic differences between languages in bilinguals. In
the
end, she presents experimental data on episodic memory, showing that
language
is encoded in bilinguals' autobiographical memory traces.

Ellen Bialystok and Raluca Barac co-author chapter nine ('Cognitive
Effects').
They aim is to demonstrate that bilingualism has a powerful effect on the
development and the conservation of crucial cognitive skills. They first
take
into account language and metalinguistic abilities, reviewing data from
tests
of monolinguals' and bilinguals' language proficiency. They state that,
when
all other possible influencing factors are removed, bilingualism is very
likely to be responsible for “enhanced metalinguistic awareness … for
different aspects of language: syntactic awareness, ... word awareness …
and, to a lesser extent, phonological awareness” (p. 196). This is probably
true, they add, especially when the child's two languages share the same
alphabet and a similar phonology.
The writers show that bilingualism speeds up the acquisition of literacy,
because it enhances related cognitive skills – the ones that are usually
known
as being part of the executive control system. These skills include
“attention, selection, inhibition, monitoring, and flexibility” (p. 202).
Bialystok and Barac do not just focus on early bilingualism, though. They
conclude by highlighting the positive effects of speaking two languages in
adulthood and provide that bilingualism may significantly delay dementia in
older age.

The last chapter ('Neurolinguistic and Neurocomputational Models'), by Li,
chronicles the connections between neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics
in
the field of bilingualism -- with a particular emphasis on recent models
and
tools. Li offers a brief history of neurolinguistics and its debates on
brain
localisation and organisation, as well as the never-ending search for a
'language switch' in the head. Then he describes the current horizon on
cognitive neuroscience, along with two relatively new techniques:
event-related potentials (ERPs) and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
(fMRI). His goal is to introduce the reader to these now widely available
neuroimaging tools, and to describe the results that researchers have
achieved
with them to date (e.g. the 'electrophysiological signatures' of
bilingualism). The last paragraph covers neurolinguistic computational
modeling. Here the author reviews several models based on connectionist
frameworks; among others, BIMOLA, BIA, SOMBIP and its evolution DevLex (Li
et
al. 2004).

EVALUATION
The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism surely keeps its promises. Grosjean,
Li
and the other authors provide a holistic introduction to the field, and
they
succeed in presenting the content in an informative, clear and accessible
way.

Undergraduate students are mentioned in the Introduction as a possible
audience, and I would agree: several features of the book make it an
excellent
handbook for people those approaching the study of bilingualism from a
psycholinguistic point of view. The chapters are all brief (ca. 20 pages
long)
structured in parallel fashion, with an initial presentation of topics and
aims, three to four main sections and several subsections. Every chapter
ends
with three or four research questions, a box with further advised readings
and
the references pertaining to the chapter. The language used is also
accessible: technicalities are explained and contextualised, yielding a
gain
in clarity without a loss in authority. Pictures and diagrams are provided
when describing theoretical models and experimental practices.

For the researcher, the book is an up-to-date 'summa' of the study of
bilingualism, and one may appreciate the thorough review embedded in the
chapters (unfortunately, the handbook-like structure does not provide a
separate section for literature review) and the in-depth analyses of
experiments and tests -- paragraphs that students are more likely to
underestimate and skip. Furthermore, scholars will value the sections
describing approaches, methodologies and techniques used by fellow
colleagues.

Researchers and students of language education, and perhaps language
teachers,
may also find this book interesting. It will not provide ready-to-use
knowledge, but also important insights that can be put into practice (and
turn
into interesting data).

To complete the picture, the book is coherent, progresses smoothly, and is
overall very well edited (I was able to spot only some minor
inconsistencies
in the reference style). This book exceeded my expectations, and I find it
difficult to point out shortcomings, as it is perfectly aligned with its
declared aims. I did expect to find a section or a box on sign language;
this
topic, however, probably fell outside the scope determined by the authors,
and
is never mentioned.

REFERENCES
Cumming, Alister. 1989. Writing expertise and second language proficiency.
Language Learning 39. 81-141.

De Groot, Annette. 1992. Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at
conceptual representations. In Ram Frost & Leonard Katz (eds), Orthography,
Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning, pp. 27-51. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.

Dong, Yanping, Gui, Shichun & MacWhinney, Brian. 2005. Shared and separate
meanings in the bilingual mental lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and
Cognition
8. 221-238.

Grosjean, François. 1997. The Bilingual Individual. Interpreting 2(1/2).
163-187.

Grosjean, François. 2008. Studying Bilinguals. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.

Li, Ping, Farkas, Igor & MacWhinney, Brian. 2004. Early lexical development
in
a self-organizing neural network. Neural Networks 17. 1345-1362.

Weinreich, Uriel. 1953. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. New
York:
Linguistic Circle of New York.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Ivan Lombardi is a Ph.D. candidate in Language Education at Università
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan (Italy). His research focuses on the use
of
games and video games to enhance language learners' motivation in classroom
contexts. He has major research interests in psycholinguistics,
neurolinguistics and non-verbal communication. He currently teaches 'Early
Language Learning' at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Faculty of
Education) and 'Digital game-based language learning' at the University of
Nottingham (MA in Digital Technologies for Language Teaching).

http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-2826.html

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