In Chapter 5 we argued that language is stored at the conceptual level, in the form of propositional representations related to the general characteristics of language and independent from the specificity of a given language. Theories of information processing must explain how verbal information is transformed into propositional representations, how one has access to them, how information is stored at the different levels of processing and what the links are between propositional and verbal processes; they must also account for the bilingual's specific behaviour, particularly for the psychological mechanisms which enable him to function alternately in one or the other language while having an extended control on the possible interference. It must equally explain behaviour unique to the bilingual, such as code-switching, code-mixing (discussed in Section 9.3) or the bilingual's capacity to translate. Thus a model of the bilingual's processing must explain at what level of representation the two languages are interconnected and must be informative about the existing relationship between the bilingual's two codes for every mechanism relevant to language processing.

In the present chapter we discuss how the bilingual organises, stores and has access to his two languages and propose theoretical frameworks for language representation and processing, which we consider as two separate but interrelated psycholinguistic mechanisms (Section 7.1). We propose a general model of bilingual processing congruent with our approach to language processing (Section 7.2). Finally we discuss briefly the bilingual's non-verbal behaviour and personality (Section 7.3).

LANGUAGE STORING AND PROCESSING IN BILINGUALS

Psycholinguistic research on bilinguals deals essentially with the relationship between the bilingual's two linguistic codes and several psychological mechanisms involved in language organisation and processing.