Bilingualism across the Lifespan: Aspects of Acquisition, Maturity and Loss

Bilingualism Across the Lifespan examines the dynamics of bilingual language processing over time from the perspectives of neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This multidisciplinary approach is fundamental to an understanding of how the bilingual’s two (or more) language systems interact with each other and with other higher cognitive systems, neurological substrates, and social systems - a central theme of this volume. Contributors examine the nature of bilingualism during various phases of the lifecycle - childhood, adulthood, and old age - and in various health/pathology conditions. Topics range from code separation in the young bilingual child, across various types of language pathologies in adult bilinguals, to language choice problems in dementia. The volume thus offers a broad overview of current theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of bilingualism. It will interest and stimulate researchers and graduate students in the fields of linguistics, neuropsychology, and developmental psychology, as well as in foreign language teaching, speech pathology, educational psychology, and special education.

Preface; 1. Bilingualism across the lifespan: an introduction Kenneth Hyltenstam and Loraine K. Obler; 2. Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children Jürgen M. Meisel; 3. Variation in children’s ability to learn second languages Margaret Humes-Bartlo; 4. Idiomaticity as an indicator of second language proficiency Carlos A. Yorio; 5. Prefabs, patterns and rules in interaction? formulaic speech in adult learners’ L2 Swedish Maria Bolander; 6. The imperfect conditional Eric Kellerman; 7. Spanish, Japanese and Chinese speakers’ acquisition of English relative clauses: new evidence for the head-direction parameter Suzanne Flynn; 8. Distinguishing language contact phenomena: evidence from Finnish-English bilingualism Shana Poplack, Susan Wheeler and Anneli Westwood; 9. The boustrophedal brain: laterality and dyslexia in bi-directional readers Loraine K. Obler; 10. Deterioration and creativity in childhood bilingualism Herbert Seliger; 11. Crosslinguistic influence in language loss Michael A. Sharwood Smith; 12. Bilingualism in Alzheimer’s dementia: two case studies Kenneth Hyltenstam and Christopher Stroud; 13. Language processing in the bilingual: evidence from language mixing Ellen Perecman; Index.