Language Processing in Bilinguals

语言学家发现，双语者不能轻易地“关掉”他们的一门语言。如果双语者不能像单语者那样容易地发挥作用，那么他们如何控制预期语言的使用呢？这项研究计划调查了当两种语言的单词和语法结构都可用时，使双语者能够选择目标语言的条件。这项工作将探索一些句子语境如何将语言处理限制在一种语言上，而另一些句子语境则鼓励双语者在两种语言之间进行代码转换。这项工作将双语者的经历作为了解语言处理及其对认知控制的影响的交互作用的本质的窗口。这个项目有许多更广泛的影响。它寻求关于多种语言的基础知识，这些知识可以为社会中的教育问题提供信息，在这个社会中，许多学习者在童年最早阶段之后面临着学习第二语言的任务。这项研究还将通过包括双语本科生和研究生以及促进与西班牙科学家的国际科学合作，为培养不同的认知科学家群体做出贡献。

Language scientists have discovered that bilinguals cannot easily "switch off" one of their languages. If bilinguals cannot easily function as monolinguals, then how do they control the use of the intended language? This research program investigates the conditions that enable bilinguals to select the intended language when words and grammatical structures in both languages are available. The work will explore how some sentence contexts restrict language processing to one language alone but others encourage code switching between the bilingual's two languages. The work uses the experience of bilinguals as a window into the nature of the interactions that characterize language processing and their consequences for cognitive control. This project has a number of broader implications. It seeks foundational knowledge about multilingualism that can inform educational issues in a society in which many learners are faced with the task of acquiring a second language after the earliest stages of childhood. The research will also contribute to the training of a diverse group of cognitive scientists by including bilingual undergraduate and graduate students and by fostering an international scientific collaboration with scientists in Spain.