Introduction

Code-switching has received considerable attention in recent years from linguists and sociolinguists, and it is no surprise, therefore, that researchers in the other fields of linguistics, such as psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, should show interest in the phenomenon (see Harris 1992 and Vaid 1986, for recent edited books covering these areas). In what follows, we will first briefly review past work in the psycholinguistics of bilingualism and show how the language mode a bilingual is in when communicating (the monolingual mode or the bilingual mode) needs to be taken into account when studying language processing. We will then focus on a particular aspect of perception and comprehension in the bilingual language mode: the lexical access of code-switches and borrowings. We will describe a number of studies aimed at getting a better understanding of this process and will end with a model of guest word recognition. Before proceeding, though, it is important that we say a few words on how we view the bilingual person.

We will call ‘bilingual’ those people who use two, or more, languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives. Bilinguals are not the sum of two complete or incomplete monolinguals but have a unique and specific linguistic configuration. They have developed competencies in their languages to the extent required by their needs and those of the environment. They normally use their languages – separately or together – for different purposes, in different domains of life, with different people.