Pieter Muysken's keynote paper, "Language contact outcomes as a result of bilingual optimization strategies", undertakes an ambitious project to theoretically unify different empirical outcomes of language contact, for instance, SLA, pidgins and Creoles, and code-switching. Muysken has dedicated a life-time to researching, rather…

We present an original model designed to study how a second language (L2) is acquired in bilinguals at different proficiencies starting from an existing L1. The model assumes that the conceptual and lexical aspects of languages are stored separately: conceptual aspects in distinct topologically organized Feature Areas, and lexical aspects in a…

This paper sketches a comprehensive framework for modeling and interpreting language contact phenomena, with speakers' bilingual strategies in specific scenarios of language contact as its point of departure. Bilingual strategies are conditioned by social factors, processing constraints of speakers' bilingual competence, and perceived…

In two experiments, we tested the role of lexical repetition, cognates, and second language (L2) proficiency in the priming of code-switches, using the structural priming technique. Dutch-English bilinguals repeated a code-switched prime sentence (starting in Dutch and ending in English) and then described a target picture by means of a…

The study examined individual differences in code-switching to determine the relationship between code-switching frequency and performance in verbal and non-verbal task switching. Seventy-eight Cantonese-English bilinguals completed a semi-structured conversation to quantify natural code-switching, a verbal fluency task requiring language…

Two studies investigated five- and six-year-old preschool children's narrative production in an attempt to show how LI may impinge on narrative production in measurable ways. Study 1 analyzed renderings of familiar stories for group (typical language development vs. language impairment), story content (Jungle Book/Goldilocks) and language…

In this study, we investigate whether preposition stranding, a stereotypical non-standard feature of North American French, results from convergence with English, and the role of bilingual code-switchers in its adoption and diffusion. Establishing strict criteria for the validation of contact-induced change, we make use of the comparative…

The primary aim of this study was to determine whether native speakers of German living in either Canada or the Netherlands are perceived to have a foreign accent in their native German speech. German monolingual listeners (n = 19) assessed global foreign accent of 34 L1 German speakers in Anglophone Canada, 23 L1 German speakers in the Dutch…

This study provides an account for a long-term selective loss of L1 (Russian) morpho-syntactic and content components in early immigrants to the U.S. The analysis of naturally occurring data is carried out from the perspective of two theoretical approaches--three models developed within language contact (Myers-Scotton 2002, 2005) and the…

Is it possible to undo or reverse language attrition? In other words, has there been, in the case of attrition, a permanent change with respect to the speaker's L1 knowledge, or do we only see temporary effects on the control of that knowledge? It is proposed here that the concept of attrition should include the temporary loss of language skills…

This article challenges a recent proposal for the theoretical interpretation of L1 and L2 interaction that results from the abrupt change of language environment in internationally adopted children. According to this proposal (Pallier, Dehaene, Poline, LeBihan, Argenti, Depoux and Mehler, 2003; Ventureyra, Pallier and Yoo, 2004), such children…

Addresses the question of how the mind represents two languages in simultaneous bilingualism. Reviews theories of intrasentential code switching, focusing on the minimalist approach. Concludes that evidence from code switching suggests that bilinguals have discrete and separate lexicons for the languages they speak, each with its own principles of…

Used event-related dense-sensor EEG recording techniques to examine the time course of language switching during a visually-cued naming task in which bilingual participants named digits in either their first or second language. Switch-related modulation of ERP components was evident over parietal and frontal cortices, and in the latter case showed…

Contrasted the effect of instruction-induced expectancies and language intermixing in an English lexical decision task performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. Results indicate that language intermixing rather than instruction-based expectancies drives the bilingual participants' performance. Consequences for current views on bilingual word…

Discusses the Matrix Language Frame model. Analysis of noun phrases in a Spanish-English corpus illustrates this compatibility and shows how recent minimalist proposals can explain the distribution of nouns and determiners in the data if they adopt the notion of matrix language as bilingual instantiation of structural uniformity in a CP.…