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What bimodal and unimodal bilinguals can tell us about bilingual language processing.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2015

GREGORY J. POARCH
GREGORY J. POARCH*
Affiliation:
University of Münster
*
Address for Correspondence: Gregory J. Poarch, Department of English Linguistics, University of Münster, Johannisstr. 12–20, 48143 Münsterpoarch@wwu.de
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Extract

In their review, Emmorey, Giezen and Gollan (Emmorey, Giezen & Gollan) contrast bimodal bilinguals (individuals who are fluent in a signed and a spoken language) and unimodal bilinguals (individuals fluent in two spoken languages) to highlight the implications of bimodal bilingualism for language processing, the cognitive effects of bilingualism, and the neural organization of languages. For this purpose, the authors focus on the evidence for language mixing in bimodal bilinguals (so-called ‘code-blends’) by hearing children of deaf parents and explore how language co-activation and control differentially impacts the processing of languages compared to unimodal bilinguals. The sustained controlling of two languages from differing modalities in bimodal bilinguals, according to the authors, may lead to modality-specific cognitive advantages in contrast to unimodal bilinguals.

Type
Peer Commentaries
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , March 2016 , pp. 256 - 258
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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