The Bilingual Mind

Elena Andonova

New Bulgarian University

University of Bremen

Language has been one of the most fascinating aspects of human cognition and it has received enormous attention in cognitive science research. If it is exciting to study how a human being masters and processes one language, it is even more challenging to investigate these abilities in speakers of two or more languages, especially since the majority of the human population on this planet is not monolingual.

The general goal of the course is to provide basic knowledge of a psycholinguistic framework of language processing in bilinguals, and of the experimental approaches that are used in the field. The course will start with a consideration of major perspectives and more general issues concerning cognition in bilinguals as well as an introduction to the chronometric and gaze-tracking methods used. We will then focus on theories and findings on the bilingual mental lexicon, including inter-lexical ambiguity, sentence processing strategies and syntactic ambiguity resolution, grammatical gender representation across languages, and, if time is available, on language processing in translators and polyglots. Most topics require a comparison with research on monolinguals which will be introduced briefly as well.

Day 1: Bilingualism and Cognition.

Required Readings

Hakuta, K. (1986). Mirror of language: The debate on bilingualism. New York: Basic Books. (Chapter 2: Bilingualism and Intelligence.)

Bialystok, E., Craik, F.I.M., Klein, R., Viswanathan, M. (2004). Bilingualism, aging, and cognitive control: evidence from the Simon task. Psychology and Aging, 19(2), 290– 303.

Optional Readings

Hakuta, K., Bialystok, E. & Wiley, E.(2003). Critical Evidence: A Test of the Critical Period Hypothesis for Second Language Acquisition. Psychological Science, 14, 31-38.

Bialystok, E., & Shapero, D. (2005). Ambiguous benefits: The effect of bilingualism on reversing ambiguous figures. Developmental Science, 8:6, pp. 595-604.

Day 2: The Mental Lexicon of Bilinguals.

Required Readings

Costa, A., La Heij, W., & Navarette, E. (2006). The Dynamics of Bilingual Lexical Access. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 9 (2), 2006, 137–151.

Schwartz, A.I., & Kroll, J.F. (2006). Bilingual lexical activation in sentence context. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 197-212.

Optional Readings

Brysbaert, M. and Dijkstra, T. (2006). Changing views on word recognition in bilinguals. In: Bilingualism and second language acquisition. KVAB, Brussels.

Kroll, J.F. & Tokowicz, N. (2005). Models of Bilingual Representation and Processing: Looking Back and to the Future. In: Kroll, J. F. & A. M. B. De Groot (Eds.). Handbook of Bilingualism: Psycholinguistic Approaches.New York: Oxford University Press.

Day 3: Grammatical Gender in Bilingualism.

Required Reading

Costa, A., Kovacic, D., Franck, F., & Caramazza, A. (2004). On the autonomy of the grammatical gender systems of the two languages of a bilingual. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6 (3), 2003, 181–200.

Optional Readings

Scheutz, M. J., & Eberhard, K. M. (2004). Effects of morphosyntactic gender features in bilingual language processing. Cognitive Science, 28, 559–588.

Andonova, E., Gosheva, A., Sadat Schaffai, J., & Janyan, A. (in press). Second Language Gender System Affects First Language Gender Classification. In: Kecskes, I., & Albertazzi, L. (Eds.). Bi- and Multilingualism and Cognition. Springer.

Day 4: One Syntax or Many?

Required Reading

Hartsuiker, R.J., Pickering, M.J., & Veltkamp, E. (2004) Is Syntax Separate or Shared Between Languages? Cross-Linguistic Syntactic Priming in Spanish-EnglishBilinguals. Psychological Science, 15(6), 409-414.

Optional Readings

Frenck-Mestre, C. (2005) Eye-movement recording as a tool for studying syntactic processing in a second language: A review of methodologies and experimental findings. Second Language Research, 21(2), 175-198.

Desmet, T., & Declercq, M. (2006). Cross-linguistic priming of syntactic hierarchical configuration information. Journal of Memory and Language 54, 610–632.

Day 5: Language processing in polyglots.

Required Readings

Proverbio, A.M., Roberta, A., & Alberto, Z. (2007). The organization of multiple languages in polyglots: Interference or independence? Journal of Neurolinguistics 20, 25–49.

Dijkstra, T., & van Hell. J.G. (2003). Testing the Language Mode Hypothesis Using Trilinguals. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6(1), 2-16.

Seminars

During the seminars we will focus more on methodology; experimental work will be planned and discussed.

Assessment

Students who take the course for credit will be asked to write a brief (5-7 page) paper that critically reviews one or more of the articles read in class, or to comment on other work that is related to the issues discussed in the class. Alternatively, students may write up a specific experimental design idea as part of a technical report.

Elena Andonova

Elena Andonova received her Ph.D. in 1999 from Cardiff University, U.K. She joined the Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology at New Bulgarian University in 1994 and the University of Bremen in 2005. Her research interests include language processing in monolinguals and bilinguals, language acquisition, dialogic interaction, spatial cognition.