The present study investigates the impact of bidialectalism on L2 production, focusing on the role of dialect modes. Shanghai-Mandarin Chinese bidialectal speakers were recruited to produce second language (L2) English vowels under the influence of either Shanghai or Mandarin Chinese mode. Results showed that in the Shanghai mode, participants'…

Embodied cognition posits that processing concepts requires sensorimotor activation. Previous research has shown that perceived power is spatially embodied along the vertical axis. However, it is unclear whether such mapping applies equally in the two languages of bilinguals. Using event-related potentials, we compared spatial embodiment…

Color terms divide the color spectrum differently across languages. Previous studies have reported that speakers of languages that have different words for light and dark blue (e.g., Russian "siniy" and "goluboy") discriminate color chips sampled from these two linguistic categories faster than speakers of languages that use…

Research has shown that speakers of different languages may differ in their cognitive and perceptual processing of reality. A common denominator of this line of investigation has been its reliance on the sensory domain of vision. The aim of our study was to extend the scope to a new sense-taste. Using as a starting point crosslinguistic…

Native language (L1) attrition is ubiquitous in modern globalized society, but its cognitive/psycholinguistic mechanisms are poorly understood. We investigated lexico-semantic L1 attrition in L1 Russian immigrants in Israel, who predominantly use their second language (L2), Hebrew, in daily life. We included Russian monolinguals as a control…

Statistical learning is a learning mechanism that does not directly depend on knowledge of a language but predicts language and literacy outcomes for children and adults. Research linking statistical learning and literacy has not addressed a common educational context in primary schools worldwide: children who first learn to read in their second…

This study investigated how students' self-reported individual differences predicted second language (L2) spoken discussion task output, an objective behavioral outcome, in the Japanese university English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. Although numerous psychological theories are used as a rationale for task-based language teaching (TBLT),…

A previous study has shown that children use recent input to adapt their syntactic predictions and use these adapted predictions to infer the meaning of novel words. In the current study, we investigated whether children could use this mechanism to disambiguate words whose interpretation as a noun or a verb is ambiguous. We tested 2- to 4-year-old…

This article introduces the nonmedievalist reader to the multilingual landscape of England 700-1400. Building on recent work exploring in particular the relationships among English, French, and Latin in medieval England, it discusses a series of "multilingual moments" from a range of sources, including letters, poems, travel writings,…

To date, a growing number of studies have shown that domain-general auditory processing, which prior work has linked to L1 acquisition, could explain various dimensions of naturalistic L2 speech proficiency. The current study examined the generalizability of this topic to L2 speech learning in classroom settings. The spontaneous speech samples of…

This study investigated how bilinguals' perception of their first language (L1) differs according to age of reduced contact with L1 after immersion in a second language (L2). Twenty-one L1 Korean-L2 English bilinguals in the United States, ranging in age of reduced contact from 3 to 15 years, and 17 control participants in Korea were tested…

This study examined the relationship between oral fluency and use of multiword sequences (MWSs) across four proficiency levels (Low B1 to C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference). Data came from 56 learners taking the speaking test of the Test of English for Educational Purposes, and our analysis obtained different measures of fluency…

Adequately responding to linguistic diversity in the classroom is imperative in European school contexts, not least because of current migratory movements. This article presents the results of an intervention study with primary school English-foreign-language learners in Germany (N = 42, M[subscript age] = 8.70 years) from linguistically diverse…

This study investigated whether children born in a second language (L2) environment pronounce their L2 with foreign accents and, if so, when foreign accents first emerge. This study also examined the latest age of onset (AO) of extensive L2 experience at which native L2 pronunciation is possible and explored several factors that affect the degree…

The linguistic interdependence hypothesis states that the development of skills in a second language (L2) partly depends on the skill level in the first language (L1). It has been suggested that the theory lacked attention for differential interdependence. In this study we test what we call the hypothesis of context-dependent linguistic…