Language Production Processes Research Articles

Language and the Brain: A Twofold Study of Language Production and Language Comprehension as a Separate or Integrated Set of Processes

Humans can understand their language due to the processes in the brain. It is very easy for language users to presume that language production and language comprehension are two simple phenomena. For psycholinguistics, these two processes are part of the three core topics in the study of the language and the mind. Psycholinguistics attempt to have a model that explains how language is processed in our brain. It is nearly impossible to do or think about anything without using language, whether this entails following a set of written instructions or an internal talk-through by your inner voice. Language permeates our brains and our lives like no other skill. Beforehand, psycholinguists described our comprehension and production of language in terms of the rules that were hypothesized by linguists (Fodor, Bever, & Garrett, 1974). Now, that is not the case. These linguistic rules inform rather than taking precedent in studying language and the brain. This paper aims to describe the brain regions/structures, language processes, and the intricate connections between them. The study discusses the brain as the underlying basis of the relationship between language and the brain. Moreover, this study descriptively analyses some of the recent expositive psycholinguistic research on language production and comprehension in order to understand the nature and dynamics of language. The methodology of this paper has to do with the research design, materials and concludes with descriptive analyses of the major finding from the secondary data reviewed in the paper. The linguistic approaches used for this study do not entail any sort of calculation or enumeration. It takes the form of a descriptive qualitative approach or a desktop study where research work mainly capitalizes on preexisting literature in the research domain. The study's main finding reveals that research works on language processing treat production and comprehension as quite distinct from each other. Language production processes differ fundamentally from comprehension processes in many respects. However, other researchers reject such a dichotomy. In its place, they propose that producing and understanding are tightly interwoven, and this interweaving underlies people’s ability to predict themselves and each other.

Psycholinguistic variables influencing word retrieval in Persian speaking people with aphasia

ABSTRACT Background Word retrieval deficits are one of the hallmark symptoms of people with aphasia (PWA). Psycholinguistic variables can predict word retrieval accuracy and latency in aphasia, but results to date have been mixed. Aims In this study, we investigate the effects of age of acquisition (AOA), familiarity, word frequency, and word length on the naming accuracy and reaction time of Persian-speaking PWA. Methods & Procedures This study consists of 25 participants with mild to moderate aphasia who completed a confrontation naming test. Naming accuracy was determined per participant per picture and reaction times were calculated using DMDX and CHECKVOCAL. Outcomes & Results The results showed that the four psycholinguistic variables were significantly correlated with naming accuracy and reaction time across the group of PWA. Multiple linear regressions demonstrated that among the four psycholinguistic variables, word familiarity had the strongest effect on reaction time; frequency and familiarity were most predictive of naming accuracy. Conclusions The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the influence of four psycholinguistic variables on word retrieval in Persian-speaking PWA using picture naming. The result of this study showed that word familiarity led to more accurate and faster retrieval, while word frequency led to more accurate word retrieval. The effect of psycholinguistic variables in picture naming is relevant to various fields of study, such as the underlying processes of language production, brain lesions, and functional imaging of naming.

How children attend to events before speaking: crosslinguistic evidence from the motion domain

How do children talk about the dynamic world around them? In this eyetracking study, we demonstrate language-specific patterns in the way 3- and 4-year-old speakers of English and Greek inspect motion events prior to speaking and describe such events in their native language. Across age and language groups, children were more likely to mention manners of motion than paths, but English-speaking children were more likely to provide manner information than Greek-speaking children were. Comparison of eyegaze patterns from the linguistic (description) task to eyegaze patterns observed during a nonlinguistic (memory) task with a different group of English- and Greek-speaking 3- and 4-year-olds revealed effects of language background on event inspection. These effects suggest that by the age of 3 years, children exhibit sensitivities to language-specific patterns of motion event encoding that influence the way they gather information from the visual world during the process of language production.

Rehabilitation of language processing disorders in bilingual patients with Alzheimer disease

We studied the levels of language production processing of bilingual subjects with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The results focus on the deficit of levels of language production processing of bilingual patients with AD at the semantic level of the first language in two aspects, which are the procedure based on the lexical implications of the terms and the continuity. While the grammatical level seems rather affected in the second language (L2) and relatively spared in the first language (L1). Consequently, the cognitive-language stimulation protocol for bilingual patients with AD is developed to offer cognitive training adapted to this deficit. The present study aims at assessing the effectiveness of PSCLAB in the rehabilitation of disturbed levels of language production processing in bilingual patients with AD from early to medium stage, by analyzing the discourse of 30 bilingual patients before and after the administration of the protocol. The results of this study suggest a cognitive language training. The PSCLAB seems effective in the rehabilitation of disturbed levels of language production processing in these patients, although controlled studies with larger samples may be necessary in order to conclude to a therapeutic efficacy of this protocol.

Childhood-acquired aphasia: A case report

Childhood-acquired aphasia or Childhood-acquired language disorder is a neurological disorder caused by damage of the brain areas related to some aspects of language production and language processing. As a result, there are problems in understanding the speech, which interferes with what the speaker intends to communicate. There are also impaired speaking and writing skills. When language processing area is impaired then communication is significantly affected and behavioral problems arise reflecting on inadequate language performance, below that could be expected based on children’s age level. The aim of this paper is to report a case of Childhood-acquired aphasia or Childhoodacquired language disorder in a four-year-old boy. 4-year-old male Muslim child from an urban environment with lower economic education. Referred by a child neurologist with complaints of being easily irritated, expressed, especially with his mother’s movement, irritability, episodic tantrums and fights with siblings. Speaks less than in periods prior to the onset of symptoms. He produces meaningless speech; he is unable to understand all speech during communication, which has been happening for a period of 30 days. Also has a history of seizure for 1 month. The child was born by normal vaginal delivery without any complications during antenatal, natal and post-natal period. His milestones of development in all domains were age appropriate and he had no history of mental illness in the family. His socialization as well as the relationship with friends was good before the seizure occurrence. The linguistic assessment revealed that the child cannot understand the speaker’s simple and complex sentences, as well as the pragmatic linguistic representations necessary for successful functional communication in various social contexts. These facts reveal that there is difficulty in the development of receptive language. There were abnormalities in his EEG report. Childhood-acquired language disorder or Childhood-Expressive language assessment revealed a-grammatic speech with a breakdown of sentence structure and with the omission or misuse of grammatical morphemes. There is spelling error in alphabet\letter and, also in words that meant disorder in the written expression. Acquired aphasia was assigned to the boy managed with bio psychosocial approach. Follow up after 3 months revealed gradual decrease of behavioural problems with significant improvement in language development. This case revealed that Childhood-acquired aphasia or Childhood-acquired language disorder sometimes present with seizure disorder and behaviour disturbances of children. Meticulous history and index of suspicion are able to provide evaluation of child with linguistic disorders.

Verbal Working Memory as Emergent from Language Comprehension and Production.

This article reviews current models of verbal working memory and considers the role of language comprehension and long-term memory in the ability to maintain and order verbal information for short periods of time. While all models of verbal working memory posit some interaction with long-term memory, few have considered the character of these long-term representations or how they might affect performance on verbal working memory tasks. Similarly, few models have considered how comprehension processes and production processes might affect performance in verbal working memory tasks. Modern theories of comprehension emphasize that people learn a vast web of correlated information about the language and the world and must activate that information from long-term memory to cope with the demands of language input. To date, there has been little consideration in theories of verbal working memory for how this rich input from comprehension would affect the nature of temporary memory. There has also been relatively little attention to the degree to which language production processes naturally manage serial order of verbal information. The authors argue for an emergent model of verbal working memory supported by a rich, distributed long-term memory for language. On this view, comprehension processes provide encoding in verbal working memory tasks, and production processes maintenance, serial ordering, and recall. Moreover, the computational capacity to maintain and order information varies with language experience. Implications for theories of working memory, comprehension, and production are considered.

Agentive versus non-agentive motions immediately influence event apprehension and description: an eye-tracking study in a VOS language

The embodied cognition hypothesis postulates that human cognition is fundamentally grounded in our experience of interacting with the physical world (Barsalou in Behav Brain Sci 22:577–609, 1999). Research has shown bi-directional associations between physical action and the processes of understanding language: language comprehension seems to activate implied visual and motor components (Zwaan and Taylor in J Exp Psychol Gen 135(1):1–11, 2006), and action behavior seems to facilitate the comprehension of associated action-language (Beilock et al. in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:13269–13273, 2008). Although numerous research studies have reported a link between action and language comprehension, the exact nature of their association remains subject to debate (Chatterjee in Lang Cognit 2:79–116, 2010). Moreover, the role of action in the production of language is under-explored, as are general language production processes in Austronesian languages. The endangered Austronesian language Truku provides typological patterns that are both under-examined in psycholinguistic research and informative for questions of language production. Truku allows flexibility in the relative location of verbs versus arguments in sentence production, and uses a symmetrical voice system that marks the prominence of different participants in an event. Working with native speakers of Truku, we tested whether performing physical motions immediately affects the conceptual saliency of the components represented in a to-be-described event in ways that guide speakers’ visual attention and shape their utterance formulation. More specifically, we investigated whether speakers’ engagement as an agent or patient in a non-speech physical action affects initial eye-fixations on agent versus patient participants in a visual scene, as well as word order and grammatical voice choices in the speakers’ descriptions of simple transitive events. The results revealed significant effects of physical action on the relative location and prominence of agents in subsequent sentence formulation, and on online patterns of eye fixations. These results provide further support for language-action connections in cognitive processing, and shed light on the cross-linguistic patterns of sentence production.

Distinct Neural Processes for Memorizing Form and Meaning Within Sentences.

In order to memorize sentences we use both processes of language comprehension during encoding and processes of language production during maintenance. While the former processes are easily testable via controlled presentation of the input, the latter are more difficult to assess directly as language production is typically initiated and controlled internally. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study we track subvocal rehearsal of sentences, with the goal of studying the concomitant planning processes with the help of a silent cued-production task. Native German participants read different types of sentences word-by-word, then were prompted by a visual cue to silently repeat each individual word, in a rehearsal phase. In order to assess both local and global effects of sentence planning, we presented correct sentences, syntactically or semantically violated sentences, or random word order sequences. Semantic violations during reading elicited an N400 effect at the noun violating the selectional restrictions of the preceding verb. Syntactic violations, induced by a gender incongruency between determiner and noun, led to a P600 effect at the same position. Different ERP patterns occurred during the silent production phase. Here, semantically violated sentences elicited an early fronto-central negativity at the verb, while syntactically violated sentences elicited a late right-frontal positivity at the determiner. Random word order was accompanied by long-lasting slow waves during the production phase. The findings are consistent with models of hierarchical sentence planning and further indicate that the ongoing working memory processes are qualitatively distinct from comprehension mechanisms and neurophysiologically specific for syntactic and lexical-semantic level planning. In conclusion, active working memory maintenance of sentences is likely to comprise specific stages of sentence production that are indicated by ERP correlates of syntactic and semantic planning at the phrasal and clausal level respectively.

Türkçede konuşma anında kendini düzeltme

In the language production process, people sometimes need repairs for various reasons. These repairs may be in the texts produced by the person himself or in the texts produced by someone else. Repairs can be found in written or spoken texts. Naturally, repairs are more common in spoken texts, and it is seen that speakers often make repairs in their own speeches. Even though there are various researches entitled such as speech errors, self-repair in speech etc. in the Western literature, the inadequency in this field in Turkish language draws attention. With the aim of describing the subject with all aspects of the language, it has importance for Turkish language to consider the subject within the light of the findings of pragmatics and psycholinguistics. In the course of speech, the speaker makes repairs for various reasons such as realizing a speech error, slip of tongue, stuttering, trying to remember, failing to remember or misremembering, hesitation in a statement, using a similar word, needing to change a dialectal feature to standard language feature etc. These repairs are implemented through phases of monitoring (detecting the trouble and intercepting of the speech); hesitation, pausing and using an editing term; making the repair correctly. In this study, the examples of self-repairs in the course of speech based on the dialects of Eskisehir, which contains the spoken language data and which have been written previously, will be examined by considering the reasons of repairs, detecting of the trouble in the speech, the editing terms which are used in the texts and the proper repairs.

Emotional health in early-treated adults with phenylketonuria (PKU): Relationship with cognitive abilities and blood phenylalanine

ABSTRACTIntroduction: Mental health, physical health, and cognitive skills have been scarcely investigated in the same sample of adults with PKU (AwPKU). This is striking since emotional difficulties may potentially contribute to cognitive impairments and vice-versa. Here we aim to fill this gap.Method: Thirty-six early-treated AwPKU and 40 controls were given an extensive battery of cognitive tasks assessing complex executive functions, inhibitory control, short-term memory, sustained attention, visuospatial attention, language production (reading and naming), visuomotor coordination, spoken language and orthographic processing. In addition, participants were given tasks tapping emotion recognition and completed questionnaires to assess depression (BDI-II), empathy (IRI) and mental/physical health-related quality of life (SF-36).Results: As a group, AwPKU performed significantly worse than controls especially in tasks tapping complex executive functions and across tasks when speed was measured but did not differ for emotional-health and physical health. In the PKU group, cognitive measures and measures of physical health-related quality of life were inter-correlated (differently than in the control group), and both measures were associated with metabolic control: better metabolic control, better cognition, and better physical health. Instead, cognitive measures and measures of emotional-health/mental-health-related quality of life did not correlate with one another and better metabolic control was not associated with better emotional health. Instead, some negative correlations were found. Better metabolic control was associated with worse perspective taking and more distress in socially stressful situations. Furthermore, difficulties in keeping the diet were associated with less emotional well-being.Conclusions: Taken together, these results indicate the advantages, but also possible emotional difficulties related to maintain a PKU diet, suggesting the importance of developing alternative therapy options.

Linguistic Disfluency in Retelling of Cause-Effect and Compare-Contrast Expository Discourses for Third to Fourth Graders from Multicultural Families

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the linguistic disfluencies of retelling in cause-effect and compare-contrast expository discourses for third to fourth graders from multicultural families. Methods Participants were 15 children from multicultural families and 15 their grade-matched children from non-multicultural families. For two groups, there were no differences on standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary tests and nonverbal intelligence test. All participants were asked to retell two expository discourses after listening to two discourses with pictures. After transcribing the speech sample, linguistic disfluencies were categorized into filled pause, silent pause, repetition, and revision. Results First, children from multicultural families produced significantly more linguistic disfluencies than those from non-multicultural families even though the total number of eojeols produced in two groups was similar. Second, children showed higher rates of disfluencies on compare-contrast, when compared to the cause-effect expository discourses. Filled pause was significantly more frequent in children from multicultural families than that from non-multicultural families and revision and pause were significantly prevalent in compare-contrast than cause-effect. Conclusion The results demonstrate that children from multicultural families produced linguistic disfluencies more frequently on the retelling of the expository discourses and it may be relevant to the difficulty on linguistic and cognitive processing of expository discourses. Linguistic disfluency would be a useful clinical index to identify the problems on process of language production at the discourse level. Key Words: Children from multicultural families, Linguistic disfluency, Expository discourse, Cause-effect, Compare-contrast 중심 단어: ë‹¤ë¬¸í™”ê°€ì •ì˜ 아동, ì–¸ì–´í•™ì  ë¹„ìœ ì°½ì„±, ì„¤ëª ë‹´í™”, 원인-ê²°ê³¼, 비교-대조

Study of the levels of processing in language production in bilingual patients with Alzheimer's disease from early to medium stage

The ability to preserve a good command of two languages decreases with old age. This decline can be more observed in bilingual patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). The linguistic deficit is the most frequent cognitive disturbance after memory disorders in AD semiology. Besides, most of the studies dealing with the linguistic semiology of the AD were essentially interested in describing the linguistic behavior of the monolingual people, and based on modest samples. This study aims to locate the disturbed levels of processing in language production of bilingual Alzheimer's subjects by analyzing the discourses of 120 participants including 60 bilingual patients with Alzheimer's disease and 60 healthy bilinguals. The results focus on the deficit of processing in language production of bilingual patients with Alzheimer's disease at the semantic level of the first language in two aspects, which are the procedure based on the lexical implications of the terms and the continuity. However, the grammatical aspects in the second language (connector and deictic) are dysfunctional, while they are relatively preserved in the first language (L1). It appears that the semantic aspects are affected and the grammatical aspects are relatively spared on the first language, however the grammatical aspect of the second language is affected. The grammatical aspect of L1 resists better because it depends on procedural memory that is relatively resistant to AD; however, the semantic aspect of the L1 and grammatical aspect of L1 are disturbed in the L2 too because they depend on the declarative memory which is early disturbed.

Cortical Dynamics of Semantic Priming and Interference during Word Production: An Intracerebral Study.

Language production requires that semantic representations are mapped to lexical representations on the basis of the ongoing context to select the appropriate words. This mapping is thought to generate two opposing phenomena, "semantic priming," where multiple word candidates are activated, and "interference," where these word activities are differentiated to make a goal-relevant selection. In previous neuroimaging and neurophysiological research, priming and interference have been associated to activity in regions of a left frontotemporal network. Most of such studies relied on recordings that either have high temporal or high spatial resolution, but not both. Here, we employed intracerebral EEG techniques to explore with both high resolutions, the neural activity associated with these phenomena. The data came from nine epileptic patients who were stereotactically implanted for presurgical diagnostics. They performed a cyclic picture-naming task contrasting semantically homogeneous and heterogeneous contexts. Of the 84 brain regions sampled, 39 showed task-evoked activity that was significant and consistent across two patients or more. In nine of these regions, activity was significantly modulated by the semantic manipulation. It was reduced for semantically homogeneous contexts (i.e., priming) in eight of these regions, located in the temporal ventral pathway as well as frontal areas. Conversely, it was increased only in the pre-SMA, notably at an early poststimulus temporal window (200-300 msec) and a preresponse temporal window (700-800 msec). These temporal effects respectively suggest the pre-SMA's role in initial conflict detection (e.g., increased response caution) and in preresponse control. Such roles of the pre-SMA are traditional from a history of neural evidence in simple perceptual tasks, yet are also consistent with recent cognitive lexicosemantic theories that highlight top-down processes in language production. Finally, although no significant semantic modulation was found in the ACC, future intracerebral EEG work should continue to inspect ACC with the pre-SMA.

Modelos lingüísticos y psicolingüísticos de la concordancia entre el sujeto y el verbo durante la producción: Una revisión

Hablar es una de las actividades más naturales y frecuentes del ser humano. Sin embargo, supone coordinar con precisión temporal la intervención de materiales de naturaleza diversa. Al producir una oración, los hablantes deben transformar sus intenciones comunicativas en una secuencia de sonidos lingüísticos que permitan transmitir el mensaje que intentan comunicar. Esta transformación implica realizar una serie de operaciones complejas. Este trabajo se ocupa de una de esas operaciones, la concordancia, durante la producción de habla en tiempo real. Específicamente, se detallan los modelos lingüísticos y psicolingüísticos de la concordancia. En el primer apartado se describe cómo se efectúa la concordancia en español, para continuar con uno en el que se introduce cómo es vista la concordancia dentro del Modelo Minimalista de la Gramática Generativa. A continuación, se puntualiza cómo es el proceso de producción del lenguaje y los modelos que permiten explicar cómo se produce una oración sobre la marcha. Por último, se detallan diferentes modelos de producción de la concordancia. Talking is one of the most natural and frequent activities of the human. However, it involves coordinating with temporary precision the intervention of materials of diverse nature. In producing a sentence, speakers must transform their communicative intentions into a sequence of linguistic sounds that allow them to convey the message they are trying to communicate. This transformation involves performing a series of complex operations. This work deals with one of these operations, the agreement, during online production. Specifically, the linguistic and psycholinguistic models of agreement are detailed. The first section describes how the agreement is performed in Spanish, to continue with a section that introduces how the agreement is seen within the Minimalist Model of Generative Grammar. Next, it is outlined how is the process of language production and models that allow to explain how a sentence is produced in real time. Finally, different models of agreement production are detailed.

Oral Versus Written Recall of Long-Term Memory Items: Replicating and Extending the Writing Superiority Effect Across Knowledge Domains

AbstractAlthough language production offers a commonly used window into individuals’ knowledge, it remains questionable whether oral or written language production allows better diagnostic content validity, for example, in educational or legal settings. Existing results vary with respect to empirical evidence in favor of the oral or the written modality in knowledge assessment. However, for list-like organized knowledge domains (i.e., domains consisting of a definite number of uniform items), a writing superiority effect (WSE) has been consistently observed. We present 3 experiments in which the WSE is replicated and generalized to hitherto untested knowledge domains and participant pools. To estimate the content validity of the verbal recall modes, free recall performance is analyzed as a function of modality, taking into account cued recall performance, which is known to allow more complete knowledge recollection. Throughout all experiments, free recall performance was better in the written than in the oral diagnosis of list-like knowledge. The results recommend written diagnosis at least for similarly structured knowledge domains. Future research should investigate to which degree writing superiority also holds for other kinds of knowledge domains and which language production and retrieval processes are responsible for the effect.

Distanz-Strukturen – Eine psycholinguistische Annäherung an Klammerkonstruktionen im Deutschen

Abstract In this paper, I provide an alternative psycholinguistic interpretation of so-called brace constructions in German. Brace constructions (e. g. “Thomas muss morgen eine Klausur schreiben.” or “… wenn Thomas morgen eine Klausur schreibt.”) can be regarded as the typical structural features of German. The analysis proposed in this article is based on linguistic phenomena which can be observed in language production of both L2 learners and native speakers. The aim of my analysis is to develop a preliminary model that reflects aspects of human language processing. The model is based on the concept of tension that arises during the language production process in case of the analytical realization of certain lexical concepts (in the case of so-called separable verbs) or grammatical concepts (including tense, passive, modality, subject). The elements involved in an analytical realization are conceptually (lexically or grammatically) combined but they have to be separated from one another in serialization and placed in a distance structure. From this interpretation, the typical structural features of German are, above all, distance structures, which consist of the finite auxiliary or modal verb and the full verb in main clauses, and in subordinate clauses of the subject and the finite verb due to subject-verb agreement. The proposed Model provides explanations also for other interlanguage phenomena associated with structural aspects in other languages. On the basis of this concept of tension, other learning difficulties can also be predicted, which can arise in the learning of certain corresponding structures in certain languages.

Overt language production plays a key role in the Hebb repetition effect.

When asked to recall verbatim a short list of items, performance is very limited. However, if the list of items is repeated across trials, recall performance improves. This phenomenon, known as the Hebb repetition effect (Hebb, 1961; Brain Mechanisms and Learning: A Symposium, pp. 37-51), is considered a laboratory analogue of language learning. In effect, learning a new word implies the maintenance of a series of smaller units, such as phonemes or syllables, in the correct order for a short amount of time before producing them. The sequence of smaller units is typically presented more than once. In the present study, we investigated the role of overt language production in language learning by manipulating recall direction. If the learning of a repeated list of items relies on overt language production processes, changing list production order by manipulating recall direction should impact the learning of the list. In Experiment 1, one list was repeated every third trial, and recall direction of the repeated list changed on the ninth repetition. In Experiment 1a, the repeated list changed from a forward to a backward order recall, where participants had to recall the items in reverse presentation order. In Experiment 1b, the repeated list changed from a backward to a forward order recall. Results showed a cost in recall performance for the repeated list when recall direction switched from forward to backward recall, whereas it was unaffected by the change from backward to forward recall. In Experiment 2, we increased the number of trials before introducing the change from a backward to a forward order recall. Results showed a decrement in recall performance for the repeated list following the change in recall direction, suggesting that language production processes play a role in the Hebb repetition effect.

The phonological unit of Japanese Kanji compounds: A masked priming investigation.

Using the masked priming paradigm, we examined which phonological unit is used when naming Kanji compounds. Although the phonological unit in the Japanese language has been suggested to be the mora, Experiment 1 found no priming for mora-related Kanji prime-target pairs. In Experiment 2, significant priming was only found when Kanji pairs shared the whole sound of their initial Kanji characters. Nevertheless, when the same Kanji pairs used in Experiment 2 were transcribed into Kana, significant mora priming was observed in Experiment 3. In Experiment 4, matching the syllable structure and pitch-accent of the initial Kanji characters did not lead to mora priming, ruling out potential alternative explanations for the earlier absence of the effect. A significant mora priming effect was observed, however, when the shared initial mora constituted the whole sound of their initial Kanji characters in Experiments 5. Lastly, these results were replicated in Experiment 6. Overall, these results indicate that the phonological unit involved when naming Kanji compounds is not the mora but the whole sound of each Kanji character. We discuss how different phonological units may be involved when processing Kanji and Kana words as well as the implications for theories dealing with language production processes. (PsycINFO Database Record

The relationship between general executive functions and bilingual switching and monitoring in language production

We examined the role of general inhibitory control and general set shifting processes in bilingual language production in 51 native Finnish speakers with English as L2, mainly learnt after the age of 7. We tested the hypothesis that inhibitory control, measured with the Simon and Flanker tasks, is central when switching into L1 (Green, 1998) and, more generally, that general set shifting processes, measured with the Number-Letter task, underlie language switching and mixing (Meuter & Allport, 1999). The results were inconsistent. The basic language switch cost effects were in line with the inhibitory control model, but the interactions with the executive tasks did not support the model and were partly contrary to it. The general set shifting hypothesis received some support. Alternative explanations of the sources of the switching and mixing cost asymmetries in bilingual language production are discussed.

Is dense codeswitching complex?

In this paper the question is raised to what extent dense code switching can be considered complex. Psycholinguistic experiments indicate that code switching involves cognitive costs, both in production and comprehension, a conclusion that could indicate that code switching is indeed complex. In recent immigrant communities, code switching would potentially be even more complex, because of the instability of the sociolinguistic situation. However, speakers of the Dutch–Turkish immigrant community perceive of code switching as the ‘most comfortable’ way of talking. In this paper it is argued that in dense code switching there is no actual switching between languages involved. Some neurolinguistics models have been proposed in this line (e.g. Green and Li, 2014). It is assumed there that speakers draw from two separate linguistic systems. However, if dense code switching would really involve drawing from two complete linguistic systems, it would indeed be complex, not only in terms of processing costs, but also in terms of structure. In this paper it is argued that dense code switching may be better conceived of as a new ‘code’ in its own right, to which elements of both languages contribute. This new code may also contain innovative features that cannot be traced back to the contributing languages. This code may not necessarily be conventionalised (as is e.g. the case with so called Mixed Languages), but it may have some implicit norms or rules that make the code predictable. In this paper it is explored what such a code may look like. To this end digital code switch data from a bilingual Dutch–Turkish internet forum is discussed. It is argued that naturalistic data continue to be an important source of information about underlying processes of language production, and that digital data has certain advantages compared to oral data when it comes to uncovering patterns. The data reveal predictable patterns, both in a structural as well as a socio-psychological, and a discourse organisational sense. It is proposed that these patterns are, apart from contact effects, also shaped by universal mechanisms and sociolinguistic factors.