On the Temporal and Functional Origin of L2 Disadvantages in Speech Production: A Critical Review (original) (raw)

L2 influence on L1 in late bilingualism (2000)

The purpose of the present paper is to bring together several studies in an emerging area of inquiry - that of second language (L2) influence on the first language (L1) in adulthood - in order to reconceptualize the findings within a unitary theoretical framework. Previous research has convincingly established that L2 may influence and even overtake the L1 ill childhood L2 learning (cf. Wong-Fillmore, /991). In the present paper; evidence is presented that similar processes may take place in adult L2 learning and use, with L2 influencing L1 phonology, morphosyntax, lexis, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, and conceptual representations. The processes taking place in these diverse areas are brought together within a single framework as borrowing, convergence, shift, restructuring, and loss. Possible constraints on L2 influence in adulthood are proposed and theoretical implications discussed, in particular with regard to the nature of the L1 competence.

The temporal dynamics of first versus second language production

Brain and language, 2013

In this study we explored the temporal origin of processing differences between first and second language production. Forty highly proficient bilinguals named objects of high and low lexical frequency aloud for both L1 and L2 separately while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded. The first electrophysiological differences elicited by response language occurred at the same early P2 peak ($140-220 ms) where we observed the onset of the lexical frequency effect, but only for those bilinguals who started naming in an L1 context and afterwards switched to an L2 naming context. The bilinguals who named objects in the reverse direction did not display a language effect in the ERPs. Taken together, the data show that the L2 naming disadvantage originates during the onset of lexical access and seems to be driven by both representational strength, which is lower for L2 words, and language control demands, which are higher for L2 words.

Lexical access in bilingual speech production: Evidence from language switching in highly proficient bilinguals and L2 learners

Journal of Memory and Language, 2004

Five experiments are reported in which the picture naming performance of bilingual speakers in a languageswitching task was explored. In Experiment 1, Spanish learners of Catalan and Korean learners of Spanish were asked to perform a switching task between their first and dominant language (L1, Spanish or Korean) and their second language (L2, Catalan or Spanish). For these two groups switching from the weaker language (L2) to the more dominant language (L1) was harder than vice versa. This asymmetrical switching cost was not present when highly proficient Spanish-Catalan bilinguals performed the task either in their two dominant languages (Experiments 2 and 3) or in their dominant language (L1) and in their much weaker language (L3 English; Experiment 4). Furthermore, highly proficient bilinguals showed faster naming latencies in their weaker languages (L2 and L3) than in their dominant language (L1). Experiment 5 tested whether a bias in the triggering of lexicalization is at the basis of such a difference. Together these results reveal that the switching performance of highly proficient bilinguals does not seem to be subject to the same mechanisms as that of L2 learners.

Does bilingualism hamper lexical access in speech production

Acta Psychologica, 2008

In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that bilingualism may cause a linguistic disadvantage in lexical access even for bilinguals' first and dominant language. To this purpose, we conducted a picture naming experiment comparing the performance of monolinguals and highly-proficient, L1-dominant bilinguals. The results revealed that monolinguals name pictures faster than bilinguals, both when bilinguals perform picture naming in their first and dominant language and when they do so in their weaker second language. This is the first time it has been demonstrated that bilinguals show a naming disadvantage in their L1 in comparison to monolingual speakers.

Illusory vowels in Spanish–English sequential bilinguals: Evidence that accurate L2 perception is neither necessary nor sufficient for accurate L2 production

Second Language Research

Spanish native speakers are known to pronounce onset /sC/ clusters in English with a prothetic vowel, as in esport for sport, due to their native language phonotactic constraints. We assessed whether accurate production of e.g. spi instead of espi was related to accurate perceptual discrimination of this contrast in second language (L2) speech of Spanish–English sequential bilinguals. A same–different discrimination task in stimulus pairs such as spi–espi assessed speech perception and a phonemic verbal fluency task elicited speech production. Logistic mixed model regressions revealed significant differences in accuracy between the bilinguals and the English monolinguals, although some bilinguals performed within the monolingual range. For the production task, but not for the perception task, bilinguals with more exposure to English and greater grammatical knowledge of English performed significantly more accurately than those with less exposure and lower grammatical knowledge. Ther...