Relative clauses have long been examined in research on first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition and processing, and a large body of research has shown that object relative clauses (e.g. 'The boy that the girl saw') are more difficult to process than subject relative clauses (e.g. 'The boy that saw the girl'). Although there are different…

The mechanisms underlying native (L1) and non-native (L2) sentence processing have been widely debated. One account of potential L1/L2 differences is that L2 sentence processing underuses syntactic information and relies heavily on semantic and surface cues. Recently, an alternative account has been proposed, which argues that the source of L1/L2…

This study used an eye-tracking method to examine whether Chinese translation equivalents activated by English prime words can continue to activate their Chinese homophones. With 30 English prime words, and 60 Chinese target words as materials, the experiment used a Tobii eye-tracking device to collect data from 30 university students while…

The current study investigated how the processing of triple cognates (words sharing form and meaning across three languages) is modulated by the semantic bias of sentence context in a reading task. In the study, Polish-German-English trilinguals read English sentences while their eye movements were monitored. The sentences were either semantically…

Despite the extensive research on bilingual development, our understanding of how lexical competition unfolds in the bilingual mind remains limited. Previous studies have predominantly focused on crosslinguistic competition, neglecting the examination of the competition process within each language and the influence of diverse bilingual…

Bilinguals' two languages are both active in parallel, and controlling co-activation is one of bilinguals' principle challenges. Trilingualism multiplies this challenge. To investigate how third language (L3) learners manage interference between languages, Spanish-English bilinguals were taught an artificial language that conflicted with English…

Late second language (L2) learners often struggle with L2 prosody, both in perception and production. This may result from first language (L1) interference or some property of how a second language functions in a late learner independent of what their L1 might be. Here we investigate prosody's role in determining information structure through…

Parallel language activation in bilinguals leads to competition between languages. Experience managing this interference may aid novel language learning by improving the ability to suppress competition from known languages. To investigate the effect of bilingualism on the ability to control native-language interference, monolinguals and bilinguals…

Libben and Titone (2009) recently observed that cognate facilitation and interlingual homograph interference were attenuated by increased semantic constraint during bilingual second language (L2) reading, using eye movement measures. We now investigate whether cross-language activation also occurs during first language (L1) reading as a function…