Introduction

Abstract

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed the subsequent chapters of the book. This book presents a state-of-the-art overview of psycholinguistic research on second language acquisition (SLA). It brings together linguistic, cognitive-psychological, and applied views on SLA and thus highlights that studying how people acquire and use an L2 is a joint enterprise and that it takes a village to understand SLA. Just as populations of bilinguals vary, the bilingual experience varies substantially across individuals: People become bilingual at different ages, in different languages, and in different contexts. Prioritizing learner-internal factors, the linguistic view is predominantly concerned with how language knowledge of the L1 or the L2 guides and constrains processing routines and outcomes. Capitalizing on learner-external factors, the cognitive-psychological view is primarily interested in how experience, e.g., frequency and cues in the input, interacts with learner-internal cognitive factors, such as attention and working memory, to shape language processing.