Lexical Access in Bilingual Speech Production: Specific Lexical Selection

Autor: Val Mejuto, Janire (Licenciada en Filología Inglesa y Máster en Psicolingüística, Profesora de Inglés en Educación Secundaria). Público: Psicolingüística. Materia: Inglés. Idioma: Español.

Título: Lexical Access in Bilingual Speech Production: Language Specific Lexical Selection. Resumen The present article explores the mechanisms of bilingual lexical access. That is to say, how bilinguals can speak in one language while the other does not interfere.This process is compared to that followed by a monolingual. In addition, it will also address the issue of code switching and how it affects to bilingual lexical access. Finally, it will also consider how affects this lexical selection, which is often ignored. Palabras clave: bilingualism, lexical access, bilingual brain, code switching.

Title: Lexical Access in Bilingual Speech Production: Language Specific Lexical Selection. Abstract The present article explores the mechanisms of bilingual lexical access. That is to say, how bilinguals can speak in one language while the other does not interfere.This process is compared to that followed by a monolingual. In addition, it will also address the issue of code switching and how it affects to bilingual lexical access. Finally, it will also consider how phonology affects this lexical selection, which is often ignored. Keywords: bilingualism, lexical access, bilingual brain, code switching.

Recibido 2018-09-28; Aceptado 2018-10-03; Publicado 2018-10-25; Código PD: 100177

Understanding how speakers map abstract concepts and intended messages into sounds has been intriguing psycholinguists in recent years. In addition, bilingualism has provided a new and interesting scope for further research. Moreover, many scholars have tried to discern the unique mechanisms that bilinguals use to represent two in the brain and avoid interference when speaking in the target language. Hence, this essay will be centred on bilingual lexical access. Therefore, I will discuss the suitability of the language specific selection mechanism proposed by Costa and colleagues (e. g. Costa & Caramazza, 1999; Costa, Miozzo & Caramazza, 1999; Costa, Colomé & Caramazza, 2000; Costa & Santesteban, 2004; Costa, La Heij & Navarrete, 2006; Costa, Santesteban & Ivanova, 2006). Hence, first I will provide a brief and simplified description of bilingual lexical access compared to monolingual lexical access. Secondly, I will explain the language specific selection mechanism compared to its language nonspecific counterpart. Thirdly, I will address the issue of code switching and how affects this particular situation to bilingual lexical access. In addition, I will address the sometimes disregarded role of phonology in bilingual lexical access.

GENERAL OVERVIEW OF BILINGUAL LEXICAL ACCESS Until 1990, the bilingual speaker was considered to have separated mental , one for each language (van Wijnendaele & Brysbaert, 2002). Nevertheless, recent studies have consistently shown that all the languages available for the speaker share a common conceptual store (e. g. Colomé 2001; Costa & Caramazza, 1999; Costa et al., 2000; Costa & Santesteban, 2004; Poulisse & Bongaerts, 1994, Verhoef, Roelofs & Chwilla, 2009; Roelofs, 1998). Therefore, it is generally agreed that equivalent words share the same semantic node (e. g. Finkbeiner et al., 2006; Finkbeiner, Almeida, Janssen & Caramazza, 2006; Hartsuiker & Pickering, 2008). In addition, Fabbro (2001) reported that both lexicons of the bilinguals are represented in the left cortical associative areas of the brain. Moreover, modern theories on bilingual production assume that when the bilingual (e. g. Spanish-Basque bilingual) is presented with a stimulus (e.g. Spanish libro [book]), its conceptual node (e. g., LIBRO) gets activated and sends activation to the lexical representation of two lexicons (e. g. both Spanish libro and Basque liburu) which at the same time are connected to a set of grammatical and phonological features (e. g. Costa & Santesteban, 2004). Thus, Costa and

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Caramazza (1999) do not assume the intervening lemma and lexeme levels between the semantic and phonological levels, as the lexical nodes are associated to grammatical and phonological properties. Furthermore, in models of monolingual production, the parallel activation of both the target lexical representation and its lexical competitors do not pose a selection problem, because the word that best matches the intended meaning of the speaker gets enough activation for selection (Finkbeiner et al., 2006). However, what happens in the bilingual speech production? When the bilingual activates the target word, not only its lexical competitors but also its translation equivalent gets simultaneously and unavoidably activated. Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the degree of activation of the competitors affect the retrieval of the target language (e. g., Costa & Caramazza, 1999; Costa, Miozzo & Caramazza 1999, Costa, La Heij & Navarrete, 2006). If lexical competitors are highly activated, it would be more difficult to retrieve the target word. Furthermore, since recent studies support a cascade model of language production, not only lexical representations will be activated but their respective phonological representations as well (e. g., Costa et al. 2006).Thus, in the bilingual case, both the target word and its translation equivalent receive equal semantic activation as they both share the same conceptual node. Therefore, a lexical selection mechanism is required by the bilingual speaker in order to be able to retrieve the intended word. This is the so called ‘hard’ problem (Finkbeiner et al., 2006) and different suggestions have been proposed to solve it. On the one hand, there is the language non-specific selection mechanism (e. g. Colomé, 2001, de Bot, 1992; Green, 1998; Poulisse and Bongaerts, 1994) which states that all the activated lexical nodes in both languages (i. e. the target lexical node, its translation equivalent and competitors in both languages) are considered for selection. Nevertheless, they assume an inhibitory mechanism which deactivates or suppress the activation of the nontarget lexical node to enable the retrieval of the intended word. On the other hand, there is the language specific selection mechanism (e.g. Costa & Caramazza, Costa et al. 1999; Costa et al. 2000; Costa & Santesteban, 2004; Costa et al. 2006, Roelofs, 1998, Vernhoef et al. 2009) which assumes that although both the target word and its translation equivalent are equally activated, only the activated lexical nodes in the target language will be considered for selection. Therefore, among the activated lexical representations, the target word will be more highly activated and therefore, there is no need for an external mechanism for selection.

LANGUAGE SPECIFIC-SELECTION MECHANISM Costa and Caramazza (1999) have conducted a series of experiments to prove the language-specific character of the language selection mechanism. Catalan-Spanish balanced bilinguals were asked to name a target word in their L1 while being exposed to distracter words in L1 and L2. The results showed evidence supporting the cascade nature of language production. Therefore, when the target word in L1 is paired with a non-identical distracter in L2, the language specific selection mechanism predicts facilitation as only the activated lexical representations belonging to the target language are considered for selection. Nevertheless, the language non-specific selection mechanism predicts interference in the non- identical condition as lexicons of both languages compete for selection. The results were consistent with the language specific selection mechanism. In addition, Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot and Schreuder (1998) argued that the bilingual’s sole intention of communicating in a particular language is enough to activate the target language, even when the nontarget language is the dominant L1. In addition, they stated that the bilingual cannot deactivate L1 representations when speaking in L2. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that the bilinguals participating in the experiment conducted by Hermans et al. (1998) were unbalanced bilinguals, thus they may have more difficulties in ignoring the constant shadowing of the dominant L1 when speaking in L2. Costa and Caramazza (1999) conducted another experiment in order to demonstrate the consistent validity of the language specific lexical selection mechanism in bilingual production. Thus, they test bilinguals with a higher level in L2 (but still unbalanced) and consider linguistically unrelated languages. The results provided further support to the language specific selection mechanism, as they proved that the similarity of the languages does not determine the ability of the bilingual to keep them separate. Furthermore, they showed that the language specific selection mechanism only considers one language for selection even if the languages are closely related. Moreover, the semantic interference found when participants were presented different language pairs showed that language selection mechanism only considers the target language for selection. Thus, these results starkly contrast with those obtained by Hermans et al. who suggested that both lexicons of the bilingual speaker compete for selection (Costa & Caramazza, 1999)

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Nevertheless, Costa and Caramazza (1999) noticed that the language specific selection mechanism may be restricted to particular circumstances. For example, they suggest that this selection mechanism may not account for language switching or at early stages of L2.

LANGUAGE-SWITCHING AND LANGUAGE INTRUSIONS IN THE BILINGUAL SPEAKER According to Roelofs (1998), among the different social and linguistic reasons for language switching, the bilingual resorts to the dominant L1 to fill the gaps that the weaker L2 is unable to complete in conversation. Moreover, Heredia and Altarriba (2001) noted that code-switching may be useful for unbalanced bilinguals “to compensate for language proficiency” (p. 165). In addition, one of the most remarkable and interesting differences between monolinguals and bilinguals is the unique ability of the latter to keep two languages separate (e. g., Hartsuiker, Pickering & Veltakamp, 2004; Heredia & Altarriba, 2001; Poplack, 2000; Rodriguez-Fornells et al., 2005; Vernhoef et al., 2009). Moreover, although they appear to be quite successful in avoiding the interference of the nontarget language, language switching and intrusions sometimes occur in bilingual speech (e. g. de Bot, 1992, Emmorey et al., 2008; Hohenstein, Eisenberg & Naigles, 2006; Rodriguez-Fornells, De Diego Balaguer & Münte, 2006; Vernhoef et al., 2009). Moreover, the language specific selection mechanism and the language nonspecific selection mechanisms seem to account differently for these cross-lingual intrusions. On the one hand, language intrusions and code switching have been considered supporting evidence for the language nonspecific selection mechanism (e. g. de Bot, 1992; Poulisse & Bongaerts, 1994). They argued that the only possibility of explaining the cross-lingual interference that sometimes occurs in bilingual production is by assuming the parallel activation and thus, competition of both the target and nontarget language in word selection (language specific selection). On the other hand, Costa and Caramazza (1999) explain the occurrence of cross-lingual intrusions by considering them the result of a failure in the language selection mechanism which subsequently impedes parallel activation of the languages (e. g., Costa et al. 2006). Furthermore, regarding the bilingual brain structure, Hernandez, Martinez & Kohnert (2000) found that while both languages of the balanced bilingual share common areas in the brain, the languages of unbalance bilinguals are represented in different areas of the brain. Accordingly, Fabbro (2001) suggested that both languages of the bilingual are coded in the brain according to the proficiency level and that the age of acquisition does not constitute a determinant factor. In addition, according to Hernandez et al. (2000) there are no specific brain areas which modulate parallel activation, but they found that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and sypramarginal gyrus appear to be activated in language switching. These findings were supported by recent research in the area (e. g., Fabbro 2001; Hernandez, 2009; Hernandez, Dapretto, Mazziota & Bookheimer, 2001). Therefore, the language specific selection mechanism may explain the occurrence of these cross-lingual intrusions by assuming a particular or momentary problem in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and sypramarginal gyrus, as experiments using brain imaging point to these particular areas as participating in the language switching phenomena.

ASYMMETRICAL AND SYMMETRICAL SWITCHING COSTS: IS INHIBITION NEEDED? Meuter and Allport (1999) noticed that L2 speakers needed to overcome a switching cost when changing from L2 to L1 than vice versa. This asymmetrical switching cost was reported as evidence supporting the language non-specific selection mechanism which involves the reactive inhibition of the representations in the nontarget language (e. g., Meuter & Allport, 1999). Therefore, since more inhibition is needed to suppress the dominant L1 when speaking in the weaker L2, it is harder for the speaker to change from L2 to L1, as they need to have access to the strongly suppressed representations in L1. In addition, evidence from bimodal bilingualism (i. e. speech-sign language bilinguals) shows that bimodal bilinguals are more likely to code-blend (i. e. produce signs and speech at the same time) than code-switch (e. g., Emmorey, Borinstein, Thompson & Gollan, 2008). Nevertheless, when bimodal bilinguals were signing in their L1 (ASL) code blends did not occur. Therefore, these results were interpreted as supporting evidence for the asymmetrical switching costs previously reported by unimodal bilingualism (e. g., Costa and Santesteban, 2004; Meuter & Allport, 1999), which assume stronger suppression for L2 than L1 in proficient bilinguals. Accordingly, when the bimodal bilingual speaks in English, code-blends occur, implying that the ASL is weakly activated during L2 production (Emmorey et al. 2008).

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Costa and Caramazza (1999) argued that the lexical selection mechanism does not necessarily involve active inhibition of the nontarget language. They proposed that rather than being a competition between languages, language selection needs to overcome competition within the target language (e. g., Costa et al., 2006). However, Costa and Santesteban (2006) pointed out that the language specific selection mechanism can only apply to the representations which are integrated in a particular . Thus, it is inapplicable to select representations of both languages (Costa & Santesteban, 2006). Hence how they account for language selection in unbalanced bilinguals who are constantly facing interference of the dominant language? According to Costa, Santesteban and Ivanova (2006) the bilingual uses different selection mechanisms according to their proficiency level. They argued that the inhibitory mechanism typical of the language nonspecific selection mechanism can be applicable when a weak L2 is involved. In other words, they posed that inhibition mechanisms may be suitable for suppressing the strong dominance of L1 when speaking in the much weaker L2. In fact, according to Costa et al. (2006) when there is cross-lingual interference between L1 and L2 (as it is the case with unbalanced bilinguals), the language specific selection mechanism is inapplicable, since in this case the specific mechanism cannot focus selection in one particular language (Costa & Santesteban, 2006). Nevertheless, when bilinguals become more proficient in their L2, they will develop a language specific selection mechanism, as they are able to keep both languages separated more successfully (Costa & Santesteban, 2006) Nevertheless, Vernhoef et al. (2009) have recently found evidence against the suitability of inhibition to account for lexical access. They measured event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and reaction times (RTs) in order to test to what extent inhibition applies in language switching. They proposed the so called L1-repeat-benefit hypothesis to explain the asymmetrical switching costs for unbalanced bilinguals (Vernhoef et al., 2009). Their results showed that unbalanced bilinguals do not undergo a switching cost when switching from L1 to L2. However, the slow responses reported in L1 to L2 are due to the fact that L2 responses are not activated and thus considered for selection when the bilingual is speaking in L1 (Vernhoef et al., 2009). In addition, when unbalanced bilinguals are speaking in their weak L2, they suffer the constant interference of the dominant L1 and thus, the language specific selection mechanism cannot operate. Moreover, when considering balanced bilinguals, since both languages are equally established in the bilingual brain, there is no L1-repeat benefit effect as both languages compete for selection (Vernhoef et al. 2009). Thus, they argued that inhibition is not necessary for language selection, but it depends on a series of different factors such as “readiness, language inhibition and stimulus” (Vernhoef et al. 2009, p. 96). Furthermore, these results find support in previous studies (e. g. Finkbeiner et al., 2006) but contrast with those obtain by Costa and Santesteban (2004) who argued that the bilingual use different selection mechanisms according to their proficiency level.

THE DISREGARDED ROLE OF PHONOLOGY IN BILINGUAL LEXICAL ACCESS The most part of the studies conducted addressing the issue of lexical access in bilingual production vaguely specify the degree of activation of the representations in the nontarget language. Therefore, do the representations in the non target language get phonologically activated? And if not, to what extent do these lexical nodes get activated? Only a few studies have addressed these phonological issues in bilingual language production and they have shown contrasting views (e. g. Costa, Roelstrate & Hartsuiker, 2006). While Bongaerts and de Bot (1994) concluded that even if the translation equivalent was activated, it was not phonologically encoded; recent studies considering have gathered evidence supporting the phonological encoding of nontarget lexical nodes (Costa & Caramazza, 1999). In addition, Colomé (2001) addressed these phonological questions in a study conducted by Catalan-Spanish bilinguals who were involved in a phoneme monitoring task. Participants were provided with some pictures and they were expected to decide which phoneme was not in the name of the picture. The results showed that they needed more time to reject the phoneme of the translation of the picture rather than the controls. This inhibitory effect suggested that both the target word and its translation equivalent compete for selection. Thus, these results support the cascaded character of bilingual language production. Nevertheless, Colomé (2001) assumes a language non-specific selection mechanism. Since according to her study both the target and its translation equivalent are phonologically encoded, Colomé (2001) states that both languages are considered for selection. In addition, she argued that since Catalan-Spanish are quite related, there seems to be economical to consider that both languages shared the common phonemes of both languages. Thus, both the target and the nontarget languages compete for selection.

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Moreover, Rodriguez-Fornells et al. (2005) conducted a study with balanced Spanish-German bilinguals considering ERP and fMRI brain image techniques to measure the extent to which L1 interferes with L2. They consistently showed that the nontarget lexical representations were phonologically encoded. In addition, they suggested that the bilingual resorts to executive function brain areas to maintain both languages separate. Thus, there seems to be supporting evidence from various sources which consistently proves that the activated lexical representations in the language not-in use are phonetically encoded.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, there seems to be enough evidence supporting the language specific selection mechanism in bilingual lexical access, especially for proficient bilinguals. In addition, it appears to provide the bilingual with an economical way of considering only the lexicon of the target language for selection. Moreover, as the recent brain imaging studies have revealed, the languages of the bilingual are represented according to their proficiency level. Therefore, it might be sensible to conclude that balanced and unbalanced bilinguals use different language selection mechanisms for language selection. Thus, while in the early stages of L2 acquisition the bilingual appears to consider a selection mechanism involving inhibition to suppress the strong dominance of L1, as their proficiency level increases, they seem to acquire a more convenient language specific selection mechanism. Accordingly, the representations of both languages in the brain also changes, from occupying overlapping areas in the brain (unbalanced bilinguals) to separate zones (balanced bilinguals. Furthermore, recent research in bilingual production seems to sustain that inhibition is not necessary in bilingual lexical access. Furthermore, different studies using various techniques (e. g. phoneme-monitoring task, ERP and fMRI) have recently been able to prove that the representations in the nontarget language are phonologically encoded, which supports the cascade processing of bilingual language production Further research should address the effects that contextual information exercises in bilingual production (e. g., Bernolet, Hartsuiker & Pickering, 2007; Hartsuiker & Pickering, 2008, Schoonbaert, Hartsuiker & Pickering, 2007). Since bilinguals are not usually asked to name words in isolation when communicating (as most of the language production experiment do), but they are engaged in more complex tasks, it seems to be necessary to implement tasks considering words within a meaningful context to provide a picture of bilingual production with consistent ecological validity. In addition, language production studies considering bilingual participants posed the problem of determining the proficiency level of the speakers. In some experiments, the language proficiency seems to be vaguely or even abstractly specified. Nevertheless, it constitutes a sometimes determining factor in the studies. Therefore, further research should consider reliable methods to specify the proficiency level of the participants to provide more reliable results.

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