In this Special Issue, the focus is on contact-induced language variation and change in situations of societal bilingualism that involve long-term contact between French and another language. As is well known, when two or more languages are spoken by groups of speakers in the same geographical area, over time, features from one language can be transferred to the other language, especially when the languages in question are unequal in terms of prestige, institutional support and demographic factors. The process that leads to the adoption of such features in the contact languages is generally known as INTERFERENCE or TRANSFER, and these terms are also used to describe the features in question (i.e. the end product of the process of transfer). In this issue we prefer to use the term TRANSFER over the use of the notion INTERFERENCE, as the former has fewer negative connotations than the latter.

This paper investigates the knowledge of constructions with absent expletives by advanced and high-proficiency non-native speakers of German whose first language is Polish. German grammar is known to license null subjects due to the strength of AGRP but not to identify them. Therefore only expletive subjects can be absent in German, except for Topic-drop and, crucially, the expletive subjects have to be absent in certain cases due to the Projection Principle. The knowledge of this phenomenon by second language (L2) learners has been investigated by two methods, elicited written production task and grammaticality judgment tests. High-level non-native speakers of German differ significantly from native speakers in both types of tasks. The differences are clearly not the result of transfer. The results reported here reveal permanent optionality in L2 grammars suggesting a deficit in the grammatical representations of L2 learners.

The passing of Elizabeth Bates (Liz) has been a great loss to our field. Many colleagues have simply put it this way: the field will never be the same without Liz. Many others have written articles and monographs in honor of her contributions to psycholinguistics, cognitive science, and neuroscience (Karmiloff-Smith, 2004; Tomasello and Slobin, 2004; Hernandez, Li and MacWhinney, 2005; Li, Tan and Tzeng, 2005; to name a few). Organizations such as ASHA and Society for Cognitive Development have also organized special symposia in honor of her contributions in the areas of speech, hearing, and developmental sciences. Here I pay tribute to Liz's significant contributions to research on bilingualism and her professional service to our journal.

This article presents an empirical and theoretical critique of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Myers-Scotton and Jake, 2001), and includes a response to Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross's (2002) (JMSG) critique of MacSwan (1999, 2000) and reactions to their revision of the MLF model as a “modified minimalist approach”. The author argues that although a new structural definition of the Matrix Language (ML) makes the MLF model falsifiable, its empirical predictions are inconsistent with the facts of codeswitching (CS). The author also identifies significant theoretical problems associated with the MLF model, and suggests that it be rejected on empirical and theoretical grounds, and on grounds of scientific parsimony. In addition, the author contends that JMSG's critique of the Minimalist approach to CS rests on conceptually significant misreadings of published research in CS and in the theory of syntax, and that JMSG fail to motivate their central claim, namely, that a Minimalist approach to CS cannot succeed without incorporating the ML construct. It is further shown that an analysis of the CS facts which JMSG consider as their test case may be straightforwardly pursued within the Minimalist Program without appealing to the ML construct or any other aspect of the MLF model. The author concludes with the recommendation that research on CS depart from the formulation of general CS-specific constraints like the MLF model and engage in the task of analyzing language contact phenomena in terms of independently motivated constructs of linguistic theory.

This study investigated attention control in tasks involving the processing of relational terms (more highly grammaticized linguistic stimuli: spatial prepositions) and non-relational terms (less highly grammaticized lexical stimuli: nouns) in a first (L1) and second language (L2). Participants were adult bilinguals with greater proficiency in their L1 (English) than in their L2 (French) as determined by self-report and performance on a speeded word classification task. Attention control was operationalized in terms of shift costs obtained in an alternating runs experimental design (Rogers and Monsell, 1995). As hypothesized from consideration of the attention-directing functions of language, participants displayed significantly greater shift costs (lower attention control) for relational terms when performing in the L2 as compared to the L1, but no difference in shift costs for non-relational terms between the two languages. The results are discussed from a cognitive linguistic perspective and in relation to second language proficiency development.

In this paper we present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are the result of language contact. We then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language (English) to the French of Francophones residing in the province of Ontario in Canada. This discussion shows, notably, how systemic and extra-systemic factors play a role in the emergence of these innovations. We also demonstrate that there are interesting differences in the extent to which these innovations are used across speaker groups and communities, and we argue that such differences suggest that there are thresholds of language contact associated with the emergence, or lack thereof, of particular transfer-induced innovations.

The phonological system of the French of Frenchville, Pennsylvania (USA) demonstrates a dramatic case of transfer in the latest (and last) generation of bilingual French–English speakers: the mid front round vowels, [œ] and [ø], have often been replaced by the English rhoticized schwa as found in the word sir. However, French schwa, which is arguably phonetically non-distinct from the mid front round vowels, does not participate fully in this merger. This result is unexpected given both the phonetic identity of schwa and [ø], and the fact that our speakers are not literate in French and, as such, have no access to the differential orthographic representations manifest between schwa and the mid front round vowels. The data argue strongly that schwa is, in some sense, “real” for these speakers. Based on a phonetic analysis of the vowels under consideration, we argue that transfer between two sound systems cannot be perceived as a simple case of phonetic replacement. Instead, transfer or convergence with English must be viewed as a systemic process that preserves contrast in unexpected ways. In the case at hand, the data suggest that the traditional separation between the phonetic and phonological levels of grammar cannot be maintained as each level contributes to both provoking merger and maintaining contrast in bilingual speech.

How do interpreters manage to cope with the adverse effects of concurrent articulation while trying to comprehend the message in the source language? In Experiments 1–3, we explored three possible working memory (WM) functions that may underlie the ability to simultaneously comprehend and produce in the interpreters: WM storage capacity, coordination and word knowledge. In Experiments 1 and 2, interpreters, high span individuals and control participants performed free recall tasks under normal, articulatory suppression conditions (Experiment 1) or while performing a secondary task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, professional interpreters free recalled nonwords or words in their first (L1) and second language (L2). The results indicated that the ability of the interpreters to simultaneously comprehend and produce is related to word knowledge rather than to an increased WM storage capacity or to an enhanced ability to coordinate processes and tasks.

Bare forms (or Ø forms), uninflected lexical L2 insertions in contexts where the matrix language expects morphological marking, have been recognized as an anomaly in different approaches to code-switching. Myers-Scotton (1997, 2002) has explained their existence in terms of structural incongruity between the matrix and embedded languages, while Poplack (Budzhak-Jones and Poplack, 1997) looks to distributional symmetries or asymmetries with other anomalous phenomena such as non-standard case marking. In corpus-based studies, bare forms often emerge as clinal in nature, with full matrix language marking appearing alongside bare forms. This suggests that discrete structural constraints are not the only factors, nor necessarily always the dominant ones in play. In this paper it is proposed that on-line processing constraints governed in particular by lexical frequency effects and inherent latencies associated with inflectional attachment may lead to bare forms. The argument is based on a multilingual corpus of native Arabic speakers from the city of Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria.

This paper proposes a shared, distributed, asymmetrical model for the bilingual mental lexicon. To test the sharing of conceptual relations across translation equivalents, Experiment 1 used the classical priming paradigm with specific methodological innovations, trying to satisfy various constraints that had not been addressed in previous studies. The results suggest shared storage for the conceptual representations of the bilingual's two vocabularies and asymmetrical links between concepts and lexical names in the two languages. Experiment 2 examined the details of meaning separation by eliciting semantic closeness rankings for conceptual relations that are equivalent across language translations and those that are not. The results indicate that bilinguals tend to integrate conceptual differences between translation equivalents, but that they also display a “separatist” tendency to maintain the L1 conceptual system in the representation of L1 words and to adopt the L2 conceptual system in the representation of L2 words.

This paper compares the initial state of second language acquisition (L2A) and third language acquisition (L3A) from the generative linguistics perspective. We examine the acquisition of the Determiner Phrase (DP) by two groups of beginning French learners: an L2 group (native speakers of Vietnamese who do not speak any English) and an L3 group (native speakers of Cantonese who are also proficient L2 English users). Two current competing models in the field of theoretical second language acquisition, namely Full Transfer Full Access (FTFA) and the Failed Functional Features Hypothesis (FFFH) are compared and their extension to L3A evaluated. Results point to full transfer of L1 in the L2 initial state and partial transfer of L2 in the L3 initial state. The L3 group performed significantly better than the L2 group on most of the properties tested. We suggest that these findings are not totally consistent with either FTFA or FFFH, but argue that they crucially demonstrate that L3A is not simply another case of L2A because transfer in L3A does not necessarily always come from L1.

We examine the variable use of locative prepositions in Cajun French, adding two dimensions to existing studies: real-time evidence, adding a diachronic descriptive perspective, and a methodological tool, measuring the degree of exposure to French (MDI). The goal of this paper is to determine the origins and the directions of language change within the system of locative prepositions. The majority of the interviews are taken from the Cajun French/English corpus, conducted by Dubois in 1997. Our results indicate that the restricted speakers use an array of innovative forms in all locative categories. Systemic and extralinguistic evidence show that some of these forms represent interference-induced innovations, while others are internally-motivated innovations stimulated in an indirect way by language contact. A model of change emerges where the older restricted speakers introduce changes that are gradually adopted by the following generations, regardless of the extent to which their linguistic ability in Cajun French is diminished.

In language contact studies, specific features of the contact languages are often seen to be the result of transfer (interference), but it remains difficult to disentangle the role of intra-systemic and inter-systemic factors. We propose to unravel these factors in the analysis of a feature of Brussels French which many researchers attribute to transfer from (Brussels) Dutch: the adverbial use of une fois. We compare the use of this particle in Brussels French with its occurrence in corpora of other varieties of French, including several that have not been influenced by a Germanic substrate or adstrate. A detailed analysis of the frequency of occurrence, the functions and the distribution of the particle over different syntactic positions shows that some uses of une fois can be traced back to sixteenth-century French, but that there is also ample evidence for overt and covert transfer (Mougeon and Beniak, 1991) from Brussels Dutch.

Two major mechanisms of encoding telicity across languages are either marking the object as exhaustively countable or measurable, or utilizing a specific prefix on the verbal form. English predominantly uses the first mechanism, while Russian mostly utilizes the second. The learning task of an English speaker acquiring Russian, then, is two-fold: to learn each individual verb with its subset of perfective prefixes, and to acquire knowledge of the fact that most prefixed verbs denote telic events. Sixty-six English-speaking learners of Russian as well as 45 controls took an on-line test of semantic interpretation. Results indicate that some low intermediate learners, and the majority of high intermediate and advanced learners are highly accurate in interpreting Russian telicity marking. It is argued that the difficulty in acquiring Russian aspect lies in learning the lexical items signaling telicity, but crucially NOT in learning the grammatical mechanism for telicity marking.

Predictions derived from the central processing and script dependent hypotheses were assessed by measuring the reading ability of 116 Grade 2–5 Herero–English bilingual children in Namibia ranging in age from 7 to 12 and investigating possible predictors of word reading among measures of cognitive/linguistic processes. Tasks included measures of word reading, decoding, phonological awareness, verbal and spatial memory, rapid naming, semantic fluency, sound discrimination, listening comprehension and non-verbal reasoning. Faster rates of improvement in literacy within the more transparent language (Herero) supported the predictions of the script dependent hypothesis. However, the central processing hypothesis was also supported by evidence indicating that common underlying cognitive-linguistic processing skills predicted literacy levels across the two languages. The results argue for the importance of phonological processing skills for the development of literacy skills across languages/scripts and show that phonological skills in the L2 can be reliable predictors of literacy in the L1.

The aim of this paper is to investigate a case of transfer within the context of language death. By examining data from Jersey Norman French (known to its speakers as Jèrriais) it illustrates the difficulty in determining linguistic norms for this relatively undocumented variety and suggests possible strategies to overcome this problem. The study compares systematically the occurrence of overt and covert transfer in the speech of a sample of fifty native speakers of Jèrriais via the analysis of a number of linguistic variables. The extent to which transfer-induced changes are themselves becoming established as norms within this speech community will also be considered.

This paper aims to contribute to elucidating the notion of congruence in code-switching with particular reference to Welsh–English data. It has been suggested that a sufficient degree of congruence or equivalence between the constituents of one language and another is necessary in order for code-switching to take place. We shall distinguish between paradigmatic and syntagmatic congruence in relation to the grammatical categories of the two languages, focusing on the insertion of English nouns and noun phrases, adjectives, verbs and participles in otherwise Welsh utterances. We shall demonstrate how differing degrees of congruence between grammatical categories in the two languages are reflected in different code-switching outcomes.

The study explores the notion that some Chinese characters contain pictorial indications of meanings that can be used to help retrieve the referent. Thirty adults with no prior knowledge of Chinese guessed the meanings of twenty Chinese characters by choosing between one of two photographs. Half of the characters were considered to be iconic and the other half was considered to be arbitrary. The proportion of correct guesses for iconic characters was high, but the proportion for arbitrary characters was at chance. These results show a distinction between characters based on the extent to which they have retained aspects of iconicity in reference to their concepts that can direct the reader to their meaning. The results have implications for using pictures to promote the understanding of the orthographic–semantic process in simple Chinese characters.

This comment responds to some of the criticisms that MacSwan (2005) presents of the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model of codeswitching (CS) in general and of Jake, Myers-Scotton and Gross (2002), in particular. The goal is to point out misunderstandings and misinterpretations that are the basis of MacSwan's critique. His attempt to show how the Minimalist Program can explain CS on its own fails. Theoretically, while either of the participating languages in CS could frame the bilingual CP, only one, the ML, does. That is, recognizing the construct of the ML as the source of the morpho-syntactic frame of each bilingual clause showing CS is necessary.

Meuter and Allport (1999) demonstrated greater RT (response time) costs for bilinguals to switch to their first language (L1) from their second language (L2) relative to switching to L2 from L1. Here, analyses of digit naming and simple arithmetic (from 2+2 to 9+9 and from 2×2 to 9×9) by Chinese–English bilinguals demonstrated that these asymmetrical language switching costs can vary with stimulus format (Arabic or Mandarin numerals), and that the asymmetry is observed both with direct retrieval (e.g. naming the digit “8”) and indirect retrieval from the lexicon (e.g. answering “2+6”). Inhibitory processes in language selection entail format- and task-specific skills.