Subject–Verb Number Agreement in Bilingual Processing: (Lack of) Age of Acquisition and Proficiency Effects

Children acquire language more easily than adults, though it is controversial whether this faculty declines as a result of a critical period or something else. To address this question, we investigate the role of age of acquisition and proficiency on morphosyntactic processing in adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Spanish monolinguals and intermediate and advanced early and late bilinguals of Spanish read sentences with adjacent subject–verb number agreements and violations and chose one of four pictures. Eye-tracking data revealed that all groups were sensitive to the violations and attended more to more salient plural and preterit verbs than less obvious singular and present verbs, regardless of AoA and proficiency level. We conclude that the processing of adjacent SV agreement depends on perceptual salience and language use, rather than AoA or proficiency. These findings support usage-based theories of language acquisition.

Translation/Interpreting psychological mechanism as embodied bilingual processing

Based on the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on bilingualism, this paper firstly discusses three fundamental models and relevant central issues involved in the bilingual processing of interpreting: the selective and non-selective feature of bilingual access and control, the serial and parallel view of bilingual processing, and the coordination view of serial and parallel procedure of bilingual information processing, with the dual purpose of explicating the bilingual processing and cognitive control mechanism in the interpreting process and paving the way for further explanation of the embodied nature of bilingual processing in interpreting from the embodied cognition perspective. Then with the two aspects of processing mechanism and neurolinguistic evidence, it elaborates how the interpreter’s embodied experience and skills in the profession, as a part of cognitive resources, play crucial roles in different levels of cognitive processing which coordinates the serial and parallel processing in the interpreting process. Lastly, this paper argues for viewing the translating process likewise as embodied bilingual processing using a brief comparison between translating and interpreting with a focus on the embodied nature of bilingual processing in their respective processes.

Quantifying cognateness: A comparison of methods for determining cognate status

Cognates, words with overlapping form and meaning, are used extensively in psycholinguistic investigations of bilingual processing. Previous research varied in the use of different qualitative and quantitative descriptions of cognates. Definitions have relied upon researchers’ perceptions, and decisions on cognate status have been defined by scores from either bilingual perceptual data or theoretical cross-linguistic differences. To determine which theoretical method for comparison most closely aligns with perceptual ratings of spoken words, we asked Spanish-English bilinguals to rate the similarity of sets of cognate pairs they heard. Rating scores were compared to 5 quantitative methods: standard methods such as orthographic and IPA Levenshtein distances, Van Orden’s, and Weber’s; plus, a novel method weighting phonological features. Comparisons of methods showed that orthographic differences were more predictive than phonological differences, suggesting that orthographic comparison methods are valid, and that orthographic representations are activated during auditory processing.