Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (review)

Recent years have seen a new academic publishing phenomenon—the handbook, alias encyclopedic dictionary or, sometimes, introduction. This Handbook of bilingualismis at least the second on bilingualism, with a third on the way. For academics, it means a chance to write state-of-the-art surveys of their area, for publishers enhanced sales to libraries. But who actually reads handbooks?

The preface claims: ‘The chapters in this book represent what we take to be the essence of the new psycholinguistics of bilingualism … [they] will satisfy the interest of students … and [at] the same time encourage researchers’ (v). So the goal is to present bilingualism to new students and existing researchers, not to be a course text or guide to how to conduct bilingualism research except by example. The contributors form a representative short list of interesting contemporary figures working with bilingualism, ranging from straight psychologists to applied linguists within a Europe/North America axis.

The contents are arranged in four main parts, each with a brief introduction delegated to a relevant expert. Part 1, ‘Acquisition’, is introduced by N ickE llisand has three sections. The first, untitled section consists of an account of the learning of foreign language vocabulary by A nnette deG rootand J anet vanH ell, relating word learning in laboratories to teaching methods. The second section, ‘Syntax’, includes a chapter on early bilingual development by A nnick deH ouwer, explaining early acquisition of morphosyntax through the separate development hypothesis. B rianM acW hinneydiscusses the unified competition model, adding features such as resonance, and N úriaS ebastián-G allésand L auraB oschconcentrate on laboratory studies of perception by children under six and adult lexical representation. The third section, ‘Biological bases’, has a chapter by R obertD ekeyserand J eniferL arson-H allon the critical period hypothesis, in which the authors argue that less successful ultimate L2 attainment by adults is due to greater reliance on explicit learning. D avidB irdsong, in a chapter on age effects, attributes a decline with age in the ability to attain native-like proficiency to a physical decline in declarative memory. M anfredP ienemann, B runoD iB iase, S atomiK awuguchi, and G iselaH åkanssondiscuss the processability model, demonstrating that L1 transfer depends on the learner’s processing capacity. Finally, J aapM urregives an account of abstract computational models of L1 acquisition that are extended to L2.

Part 2, ‘Comprehension’, has five papers, preceded by an introduction by N atashaT okowiczand C harlesP erfetti. T onD ijkstra’s chapter on word recognition and access suggests that the interaction between tasks and nonselective lexical access necessitates a model such as bilingual interactive activation (BIA). M ichaelT homasand W alter vanH euvenpresent computational models of bilingual comprehension as a backcloth to the SOPHIA (semantic, orthographic, and phonological interactive activation) model. In their chapter on cognates, R osaS ánchez-C asasand J oséG arcía-A lbeareview experiments that show morphology needs to be incorporated into models of bilingual processing. The chapter by W endyF rancison bilingual semantic and conceptual representation expands her useful 1999 survey. C herylF renck-M estre’s chapter deals with the use of research techniques using eye movements and event-related potentials (ERPs) in L2 parsing, showing that contradictory results may be resolved by separating syntactic and semantic anomalies.

Part 3, ‘Language production and control’, includes six papers, with an introduction by H erbertS chriefers. Selection processes and bilingual lexical access are dealt with by W idoL aH eij, who suggests that ‘a satisfactory model of access’ in monolinguals along the lines of Willem Levelt (1989) can serve for bilinguals as well. Lexical access...