This paper aims to foster discussion of the means by which bilinguals control their two language systems. It proposes an inhibitory control (IC) model that embodies the principle that there are multiple levels of control. In the model a language task schema (modulated by a higher level of control) “reactively” inhibits potential competitors for production at the lemma level by virtue of their language tags. The IC model is used to expand the explanation of the effect of category blocking in translation proposed by Kroll and Stewart (1994), and predictions of the model are tested against other data. Its relationship to other proposals and models is considered and future directions proposed.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1366728998000133

Mental Control of the Bilingual Lexico-Semantic System.

How social contexts support and shape language development

This chapter examines the factors that influence it will be spelled out, and the impact it has on language behavior. It describes existing evidence for the bilingual’s language modes in language production, language perception, language acquisition and language pathology. Language mode is the state of activation of the bilingual’s languages and language processing mechanisms at a given point in time. The bilingual’s languages are depicted on the vertical axis by a square located in the top and bottom parts of the figure, their level of activation is represented by the degree of darkness of the square and the ensuing language mode is depicted by the position of the two squares on the horizontal axis which ranges from a monolingual mode to a bilingual mode. Any number of factors can help position a bilingual speaker or listener at a particular point on the language mode continuum set the activation level of the bilingual’s languages and language processing mechanisms.

The bilingual's language modes 1

Although biliteracy is common worldwide, relatively little scholarly work has attended explicitly to it. This review draws from the literatures on literacy, bilingualism, and the teaching of reading, writing, and second and foreign languages to propose a framework for understanding biliteracy. It argues that the complex array of possible biliteracy configurations can be accounted for by understanding biliteracy in terms of a series of interrelated continua. These continua define the contexts, individual development, and media of biliteracy, and are as follows: micro-macro, oral-literate, monolingual-bilingual, reception-production, oral language-written language, first and second language transfer, simultaneous-successive exposure, similar-dissimilar language structures, and convergent-divergent scripts. An understanding of the intersecting and nested nature of the continua has implications for teaching and research in biliteracy.

Continua of Biliteracy

A particular view of bilingualism — the monolingual (or fractional) view — has been given far too much importance in the study of bilinguals. According to it, the bilingual is (or should be) two monolinguals in one person. In this paper, the monolingual view is spelled out, and the negative consequences it has had on various areas of bilingual research are discussed. A bilingual (or wholistic) view is then proposed. According to it, the bilingual is not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals; rather, he or she has a unique and specific linguistic configuration. This view is described and four areas, of research are discussed in its light: comparing monolinguals and bilinguals, language learning and language forgetting, the bilingual's speech modes, the bilingual child and ‘semilingualism’.

Francois Grosjean

Papers

Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism.@@@Language Spread: Studies in Diffusion and Social Change.