This article presents a brief discussion of the key questions which were in focus interest research on bilingualism last five decades, particularly field bilingual language acquisition. We highlight how initially negative view has changed based scientific evidence. The overview starts with some paths already taken bilingualism, major findings concerning development and consequences these for cu...

The present study was an attempt to investigate the acquisition of negationproperties by Persian monolingual and Kurdish-Persian bilingual learners of Englishacross different levels of language proficiency and within a generative framework.Generative models are generally concerned with issues such as universal grammar(UG), language transfer, and morphological variability in nonprimary languaged...

Early deafness is thought to affect low-level sensorimotor processing such as selective attention, whereas bilingualism is thought to be strongly associated with higher order cognitive processing such as attention switching under cognitive load. This study explores the effects of bimodal-bilingualism (in American Sign Language and written English) on attention switching, in order to contrast th...

The possibility that early bilingualism affects children’s language and cognitive development has long been a concern for parents and educators. In the first half of the 20 th century, the prevailing view was that bilingualism and second-language acquisition early in life made children confused and interfered with their ability to develop normal cognitive functions 1 and succeed in educational ...

This study looks at intonational phrasing patterns in read speech produced by third language (L3) learners of German who speak Cantonese as the first language (L1) and English as the second language (L2). Acoustic analyses of recordings from 15 L3 learners and 10 native German speakers revealed that intonational phrasing in L3 German was different from that of natives in that 1) L3 learners pro...

The present study examined whether bilingualism facilitates acquisition of novel words in adults with different language histories. Word-learning performance was tested in monolingual English speakers, early English-Spanish bilinguals, and early English-Mandarin bilinguals. Novel words were phonologically unfamiliar to all participants, and they were acquired in association with their English t...

Bilingualism is a fascinating area of study with the potential to contribute much to the understanding of language learning, production, comprehension and processing. Nuria Sebastian-Galles’ paper [this issue] provides some interesting evidence on the early speech perception of bilingual language acquisition. I first make some comments on the data she presents before moving on to a somewhat bro...

It is a timely issue to understand the impact of bilingualism upon brain structure in healthy aging and upon cognitive decline given evidence of its neuroprotective effects. Plastic changes induced by bilingualism were reported in young adults in the left inferior parietal lobule (LIPL) and its right counterpart (RIPL) (Mechelli et al., 2004). Moreover, both age of second language (L2) acquisit...