Dual language statistical word segmentation in infancy: Simulating a language-mixing bilingual environment.

Infants are sensitive to syllable co-occurrence probabilities when segmenting words from fluent speech. However, segmenting two languages overlapping at the syllabic level is challenging because the statistical cues across the languages are incongruent. Successful segmentation, thus, relies on infants' ability to separate language inputs and track the statistics of each language. Here, we report three experiments investigating how infants statistically segment words from two overlapping languages in a simulated language-mixing bilingual environment. In the first two experiments, we investigated whether 9.5-month-olds can use French and English phonetic markers to segment words from two overlapping artificial languages produced by one individual. After showing that infants could segment the languages when the languages were presented in isolation (Experiment 1), we presented infants with two interleaved languages differing in phonetic cues (Experiment 2). Both monolingual and bilingual infants successfully segmented words from one of the two languages-the language heard last during familiarization. In Experiment 3, a conceptual replication, we replicated the findings of Experiment 2 with a different population and with different cues. As before, when 12-month-old monolingual infants heard two interleaved languages differing in English and Finnish phonetic cues, they learned only the last language heard during familiarization. Together, our findings suggest that segmenting words in a language-mixing environment is challenging, but infants possess a nascent ability to recruit phonetic cues to segment words from one of two overlapping languages in a bilingual-like environment. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pNcpxZguw.

A longitudinal investigation of language mixing in Spanish-English dual language learners: the role of language proficiency, variability, and sociolinguistic factors.

This study examines language mixing in 26 Spanish-English dual language learners over the course of their first year of preschool. The children's patterns of language choice while interacting in monolingual language contexts were analyzed at age 3;6 and 4;5 to examine: (1) whether the frequency of language mixing changed during the year; (2) whether mixing was related to proficiency as measured by utterance length and lexical diversity; and (3) whether there were different subgroups of children, among the participants, with similar proficiency and language use patterns. The results indicate that language mixing, which was low at both ages, was related to limited lexical resources only at 3;6. However, by age 4;5, language choice was more constrained by sociolinguistic variables - children's awareness of the language prescribed by the majority culture - than by proficiency. An exploratory cluster analysis further reveals different profiles of learners sharing similar proficiency and language mixing characteristics.

The influence of language behavior in social preferences and selective trust of monolingual and bilingual children.

Experiences living in a community where people share more than one language may affect children's strategies to selective learning. Language mixing may be one type of speakers' characteristics that bilingual children, but not monolingual children, use to evaluate speakers. A total of 120 English-speaking monolingual (n = 40) and English-Mandarin bilingual (n = 80) 4- and 5-year-olds heard a pair of speakers each tell a story either with or without language mixing and indicated their preferences for either speaker in friendship, explicit judgment, and novel label endorsement. Bilingual children, but not their monolingual counterparts, preferred the single-language speaker to the language-mix speaker across different test questions. Our findings suggest that social relevance in the larger communicative context may contribute to the development of children's social preferences and selective learning based on certain characteristics of the speakers.

The role of language proficiency and linguistic distance in cross-linguistic treatment effects in aphasia.

Current findings from intervention in bilingual aphasia are inconclusive regarding the extent to which levels of language proficiency and degree of linguistic distance between treated and non-treated languages influence cross-language generalisation and changes in levels of language activation and inhibition following treatment. In this study, we enrolled a 65-year-old multilingual speaker with aphasia and administered treatment in his L1, Dutch. We assessed pre- and post-treatment performance for seven of his languages, five of high proficiency and two of lower proficiency. We asked whether treatment in L1 would generalise to his other languages or increase interference among them. Forty hours of treatment were completed over the course of five weeks. Each language was tested three times at pretreatment and at post-treatment. Testing included measures of narrative production, answering questions, picture description and question generation. Dependent measures examined language efficiency, defined as Correct Information Units (CIUs)/min, as well as language mixing, defined as proportion of code-mixed whole words. We found that our participant's improved efficiency in Dutch was mirrored by parallel improvement in the four languages of high proficiency: English, German, Italian and French. In contrast, in his languages of lower proficiency, Norwegian and Spanish, improved efficiency was limited. An increase in code-mixing was noted in Spanish, but not in Norwegian. We interpret the increased code-mixing in Spanish as indication of heightened inhibition following improvement in a language of close linguistic proximity, Italian. We conclude that an interaction of language proficiency and linguistic similarity affects cross-language generalisation following intervention in multilingual aphasia.

Language Distance Moderates the Effect of a Mixed-Language Environment on New-Word Learning for 4-Year-Old Children.

As bilingual families increase, the phenomenon of language mixing among children in mixed-language environments has gradually attracted academic attention. This study aims to explore the impact of language mixing on vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children and whether language distance moderates this impact. We recruited two groups of bilingual children, Chinese-English bilinguals and Chinese-Japanese bilinguals, to learn two first-language new words in a monolingual environment and a mixed-language environment, respectively. The results showed that the participants could successfully recognize the novel words in the code-switching sentences. However, when we compared the performance of the two groups of bilingual children, we found that the gaze time proportion of the Chinese-English bilingual children under the code-switching condition was significantly higher than that of the Chinese-Japanese bilingual children, while there was no significant difference under the monolingual condition. This suggests that language mixing has an inhibitory effect on vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children and that this inhibitory effect is influenced by language distance, that is, the greater the language distance, the stronger the inhibitory effect. This study reveals the negative impact of language mixing on vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children and also implies that there may be some other influencing factors, so more research is needed on different types of bilingual children.

Mixed-Language Input and Infant Volubility: Friend or Foe?

Language mixing is a common feature of many bilingually-raised children's input. Yet how it is related to their language development remains an open question. The current study investigated mixed-language input indexed by observed (30-second segment) counts and proportions in day-long recordings as well as parent-reported scores, in relation to infant vocal activeness (i.e., volubility) when infants were 10 and 18 months old. Results suggested infants who received a higher score or proportion of mixed input in one-on-one social contexts were less voluble. However, within contexts involving language mixing, infants who heard more words were also the ones who produced more vocalizations. These divergent associations between mixed input and infant vocal development point for a need to better understand the causal factors that drive these associations.

Language abilities, not cognitive control, predict language mixing behavior in bilingual speakers with aphasia.

PURPOSE: Language Mixing (LM) occurs among neurotypical bilinguals as well as among bilingual persons with aphasia (BiPWAs). The current study aimed to investigate whether LM in BiPWAs stems from a linguistic impairment, an impairment in cognitive control, or both. METHOD: Twenty Russian-Hebrew-speaking BiPWAs were split into two groups based on aphasia severity (Severe/Moderate vs. Mild). Frequencies and patterns of LM in narrative production by BiPWAs in L1-Russian and in L2-Hebrew were analyzed. To investigate the underlying mechanisms of LM, all participants completed linguistic background questionnaires, the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) in both languages, and a battery of 10 cognitive tests. RESULTS: The results indicated an effect of aphasia severity and an effect of language. Higher LM frequency was observed in BiPWAs with severe/moderate aphasia symptoms as compared to BiPWAs with mild symptoms. In both groups, higher LM frequency was observed in L2-Hebrew narratives, the weaker post-stroke language for most participants in the sample. The results also showed qualitative LM differences in L1-Russsian and L2-Hebrew contexts. In L1-Russian narratives, BiPWAs mainly switched to L2-Hebrew nouns, while in L2-Hebrew narratives, they mainly inserted L1-Russian discourse markers and function words. CONCLUSIONS: Linguistic factors such as pre- and post-stroke self-rated language proficiency and level of language impairment due to aphasia were found to predict LM frequency in L1-Russian and in L2-Hebrew. Cognitive abilities did not predict LM frequency. Based on our findings, we suggest that LM behavior in BiPWAs might be primarily related to language skills in L1 and L2, rather than to cognitive control impairments.

Effects of language mixing on bilingual children's word learning.

Language mixing is common in bilingual children's learning environments. Here, we investigated effects of language mixing on children's learning of new words. We tested two groups of 3-year-old bilinguals: French-English (Experiment 1) and Spanish-English (Experiment 2). Children were taught two novel words, one in single-language sentences ("Look! Do you see the dog on the teelo?") and one in mixed-language sentences with a mid-sentence language switch ("Look! Do you see the chien/perro on the walem?"). During the learning phase, children correctly identified novel targets when hearing both single-language and mixed-language sentences. However, at test, French-English bilinguals did not successfully recognize the word encountered in mixed-language sentences. Spanish-English bilinguals failed to recognize either word, which underscores the importance of examining multiple bilingual populations. This research suggests that language mixing may sometimes hinder children's encoding of novel words that occur downstream, but leaves open several possible underlying mechanisms.

Attentional orienting abilities in bilinguals: Evidence from a large infant sample.

A key question in studies of cognitive development is whether bilingual environments impact higher-cognitive functions. Inconclusive evidence in search of a "bilingual cognitive advantage" has sparked debates on the reliability of these findings. Few studies with infants have examined this question, but most of them include small samples. The current study presents evidence from a large sample of 6- and 10-month-old monolingual- and bilingual-exposed infants (N = 152), which includes a longitudinal subset (n = 31), who completed a cueing attentional orienting task. The results suggest bilingual infants showed significant developmental gains in latency performance during the condition that was most cognitively demanding (Incongruent). The results also revealed bilingual infants' performance was associated with their parents' dual-language switching behavior. Taken together, these results provide support that bilingual experiences (i.e., dual-language mixing) influence infants' shifting and orienting of attention.

[A case of bilingual aphasia with language mixing between Japanese and English caused by superior longitudinal fasciculus lesion-a study using functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging].

We report a case of left-handed bilingual aphasia with phonemic paraphasia and language mixing from Japanese as a first language to English as a second language. The lesion caused by cerebral infarction was mainly localized in the left parietal lobe white matter. The patient was a 46-year-old, left-handed woman who was bilingual in Japanese and English. Both auditory and visual comprehensions were well maintained after the acute phase of the disease; however, language mixing between Japanese and English was observed during Japanese speech. A pathophysiological interpretation of this case required a focus on the brain network. Our findings suggest that lesions of the superior longitudinal fasciculus and arcuate fasciculus of the white matter fibers just below the left inferior parietal lobule are associated with bilingual aphasia.

¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing.

In bilingual communities, social interactions take place in both single- and mixed-language contexts. Some of the information shared in multilingual conversations, such as interlocutors' personal information, is often required in consequent social encounters. In this study, we explored whether the autobiographical information provided in a single-language context is better remembered than in an equivalent mixed-language situation. More than 400 Basque-Spanish bilingual (pre) teenagers were presented with new persons who introduced themselves by either using only Spanish or only Basque, or by inter-sententially mixing both languages. Different memory measures were collected immediately after the initial exposure to the new pieces of information (immediate recall and recognition) and on the day after (delayed recall and recognition). In none of the time points was the information provided in a mixed-language fashion worse remembered than that provided in a strict one-language context. Interestingly, the variability across participants in their sociodemographic and linguistic variables had a negligible impact on the effects. These results are discussed considering their social and educational implications for bilingual communities.

Compound Formation in Language Mixing.

In this paper, I discuss nominal compound formation in language contact situations, the question being of how compounding in language mixing can inform both theories of mixing and theories of word-hood. This contributes to our further understanding of how word formation operates in cases of language mixing and what exactly is being mixed in mixing, i.e., words vs. units smaller than words, e.g., stems or roots. Compounding is important to answer this question, as languages differ with respect to the units they employ for compound formation, i.e., phrases vs. stems. The data to be discussed will be a mixture of materials that have already been published in the literature and newly collected data and involve several mixing varieties, namely, Greek-English, Greek-Italian, Greek-Turkish, Turkish-Norwegian, Turkish-Dutch, and French-Dutch. I then offer an analysis using the tools of syntactic models of word formation (e.g., distributed morphology), assuming a decompositional approach.

What about proactive language control?

While several reviews provide an in-depth discussion on reactive language control, which is the language control process that is initiated when the non-target language disrupts the selection of target language words, few have touched on proactive language control, which is the language control process implemented as an anticipation of any non-target language interference disrupting the selection of target language words. In the current review, three prominent markers of proactive language control are discussed (i.e., the reversed language dominance effect, language-mixing costs, and the blocked language-order effect). Based on these three markers, it appears that proactive language control can be implemented to mainly restrict interference from the first language during bilingual language production, but is typically absent during bilingual language comprehension. The literature also implies that proactive language control might be partly domain general. With respect to the underlying mechanism of proactive language control, there are some indications that proactive language control relies on inhibition, but no unequivocal evidence has been provided so far.

Language mixing patterns in a bilingual individual with non-fluent aphasia.

BACKGROUND: Language mixing in bilingual speakers with aphasia has been reported in a number of research studies, but the reasons for the mixing and whether it reflects typical or atypical behaviour has been a matter of debate. AIMS: In this study we tested the hypothesis that language mixing behaviour in bilingual aphasia reflects lexical retrieval difficulty. METHODS & PROCEDURES: We recruited a Hebrew-English bilingual participant with mild-moderate non-fluent agrammatic aphasia and assessed his languages at three timepoints. We analysed the participant's Hebrew and English production for retrieval during single-word naming, sentences, and discourse, and identified all instances of language mixing. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: We found that there was a greater frequency of language mixing during production of more difficult lexical items, namely the post-morbidly less proficient language (compared to the more proficient language), function words (compared to content words), and single-word naming (compared to retrieval in the context of connected speech tasks), but not for verbs (compared to nouns). CONCLUSIONS: In this bilingual participant with non-fluent aphasia, language mixing behaviour closely resembles lexical retrieval difficulty. Thus, we suggest that bilingual speakers with aphasia may mix their languages as a strategy to maximise communication.

Units of Language Mixing: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective.

Language mixing is a ubiquitous phenomenon characterizing bilingual speakers. A frequent context where two languages are mixed is the word-internal level, demonstrating how tightly integrated the two grammars are in the mind of a speaker and how they adapt to each other. This raises the question of what the minimal unit of language mixing is, and whether or not this unit differs depending on what the languages are. Some scholars have argued that an uncategorized root serves as a unit, others argue that the unit needs to have been categorized prior to mixing. We will discuss the question of what the relevant unit for language mixing is by studying word-internal mixing in Cypriot Greek-English, English-Norwegian, Greek-English, Greek-German, and Spanish-German varieties that have been reported in the literature based on data from judgment experiments and spoken corpora. By understanding and modeling the units of language mixing across languages, we will gain insight into how languages adapt to each other word-internally, and what some possible outcomes of language contact are in the minds of speakers.

Psycholinguistic, cognitive, and neural implications of bimodal bilingualism.

Bimodal bilinguals, fluent in a signed and a spoken language, exhibit a unique form of bilingualism because their two languages access distinct sensory-motor systems for comprehension and production. Differences between unimodal and bimodal bilinguals have implications for how the brain is organized to control, process, and represent two languages. Evidence from code-blending (simultaneous production of a word and a sign) indicates that the production system can access two lexical representations without cost, and the comprehension system must be able to simultaneously integrate lexical information from two languages. Further, evidence of cross-language activation in bimodal bilinguals indicates the necessity of links between languages at the lexical or semantic level. Finally, the bimodal bilingual brain differs from the unimodal bilingual brain with respect to the degree and extent of neural overlap for the two languages, with less overlap for bimodal bilinguals.

Syntactic mixing across generations in an environment of community-wide bilingualism.

A quantitative analysis of a trans-generational, conversational corpus of Chintang (Tibeto-Burman) speakers with community-wide bilingualism in Nepali (Indo-European) reveals that children show more code-switching into Nepali than older speakers. This confirms earlier proposals in the literature that code-switching in bilingual children decreases when they gain proficiency in their dominant language, especially in vocabulary. Contradicting expectations from other studies, our corpus data also reveal that for adults, multi-word insertions of Nepali into Chintang are just as likely to undergo full syntactic integration as single-word insertions. Speakers of younger generations show less syntactic integration. We propose that this reflects a change between generations, from strongly asymmetrical, Chintang-dominated bilingualism in older generations to more balanced bilingualism where Chintang and Nepali operate as clearly separate systems in younger generations. This change is likely to have been triggered by the increase of Nepali presence over the past few decades.

Language choice in bimodal bilingual development.

Bilingual children develop sensitivity to the language used by their interlocutors at an early age, reflected in differential use of each language by the child depending on their interlocutor. Factors such as discourse context and relative language dominance in the community may mediate the degree of language differentiation in preschool age children. Bimodal bilingual children, acquiring both a sign language and a spoken language, have an even more complex situation. Their Deaf parents vary considerably in access to the spoken language. Furthermore, in addition to code-mixing and code-switching, they use code-blending-expressions in both speech and sign simultaneously-an option uniquely available to bimodal bilinguals. Code-blending is analogous to code-switching sociolinguistically, but is also a way to communicate without suppressing one language. For adult bimodal bilinguals, complete suppression of the non-selected language is cognitively demanding. We expect that bimodal bilingual children also find suppression difficult, and use blending rather than suppression in some contexts. We also expect relative community language dominance to be a factor in children's language choices. This study analyzes longitudinal spontaneous production data from four bimodal bilingual children and their Deaf and hearing interlocutors. Even at the earliest observations, the children produced more signed utterances with Deaf interlocutors and more speech with hearing interlocutors. However, while three of the four children produced >75% speech alone in speech target sessions, they produced <25% sign alone in sign target sessions. All four produced bimodal utterances in both, but more frequently in the sign sessions, potentially because they find suppression of the dominant language more difficult. Our results indicate that these children are sensitive to the language used by their interlocutors, while showing considerable influence from the dominant community language.