An architecture image shows three levels of the speech production, the concept level, the lemma level and the phonological level. In the concept level, an object become information input in the brain; in the lemma level, a word seek process would carry out in the lexical access; and while in the phonological level the verbal output should be formed. The languages competition, if occurs, proceeds during the process of those three levels ordinal flow. However, the language-specific mechanism suggests that there is no competition existence crosses languages, because the speech production is only carried out within the target language, which has been decided by the intention of speaking one language alone. A language-selective lexical access model is available to support this mechanism. Bloem and La Heij (2003) and Bloem (2004) carried out a picture vs. word distractors in a translation Stroop task with a group of Dutch-English proficient participants. The participants showed the Stroop-type interference under the condition of semantically related distractor words, whereas no interference under the condition of semantically related distractor pictures. Hence the experimenters proposed that only the specific target language would response for verbal process.
In contrast, there are three models reject the language-selective theory but support the language-nonselective theory. The differences among the three are the distinct assumptions about at which level of the locus of competition occurs.
The first model states that the locus fixes at the lemma level. A cross-language picture-word Stroop paradigm was used to test the picturing naming. A group of the Dutch-English bilinguals whose Dutch were the first language, were asked to name a pattern of pictures in the second language, English. While they were doing their task, four types of spoken word distractors could appear before, during or after the presentation of the pictures. The four types of distracting words were “either the semantically or phonologically related to the name of the picture, phonologically related to the translation of the picture’s name in Dutch, or unrelated” (p124. Kroll, 2006). Then the time cost of each picture naming was recorded. The result showed that the semantic distractors gave a significant time cost increasing. Therefore, the experimenter concluded that the language lexical access competition is focus on the lemma level.
Another picturing naming experiment with Catalan-Spanish bilinguals was designed to examine the hypothesis that the language lexical access is competition at the phonological level. The participants were asked to judge whether the name of the picture belonged to the same cognate group with the two languages, Catalan and Spanish respectively. The significant cognate facilitation appeared in both languages. Contractedly, the Spanish monolinguals who took the same task did not show a good ability to tell apart the cognate. The hypothesis therefore is proved, which claimed that the language lexical access is competition at the phonological level.
The final model about the language-nonselective lexical access is that the selection is beyond the phonological level. Since even just before the articulation begins the nonselectivity still maintains, the nonselective lexical access may stress out a further effect beyond the phonological level. There are two assumptions about the extended effect. One of which believes there is feedback from the phonology to the lemma level. This model is based on two fundamental characters of the bilingualism. That are the second language is normally slower and hence offers time for the first language to create feedback; in the meanwhile, the fist language often has higher speed and activity. Let’s see an example. The Dutch-English bilinguals were asked to name a picture of “leaf”, in Dutch the translation is “blad” and a homophonic word is “lief”, that means “dear” or “sweet”. It showed slower at this case than matched controls. Therefore, we say the first language has the ability to go backwards to the lemma level from the phonological level. However, also due to the characters of the bilingualism this situation only is only suitable to the first language, since the second language does not have the same advantages.
Additionally, Kello, Plaut and MacWhinney (2002) stressed the assumption of competition beyond the phonological level even further, which supposed that the competition still existed during the procedure of phonology to the articulatory execution. A study of word naming was designed to prove this assumption. Three groups of English-Spanish speakers took part this study. The three groups showed different proficiency in their second language, Spanish. The first group is the least proficient group who only had classroom experience. The second group is medium proficient group who had some practical experience. The third group was the most proficient group. The three groups were all asked to name Spanish words, some of which were cognates in English. Moreover, the experimenters measured two aspects that were the articulatory duration and voice onset time. In the measure just at the articulation point, all three groups showed quicker response on the English cognate words compared to the noncognates, whilst only the least proficient group retained the same effect in the speech execution measure.
It seems that all four models above showed confidence to answering the question of how a person ensures only one language could be selected to produce certain speech. If leaving the psycholinguists’ theories for a while and have a view at the neurological region, that may help to make a judge about the argument. The current neuroimaging studies provided that “the neural tissue activated by each language is largely shared” (Abutalebi, Cappa and Perani, 2005). That actually gave out neurological evidence about the cross-language competition mechanism. In the meanwhile, it implicated that the activity degree of the two languages was a very important measure about the language selection. The bilingual speech production system actually “picks up the lexical node with the highest level of activation in any language” (Hermans, 2000). It means the selection is not possible hermetically sealed off from one another in bilinguals, only in one certain language; especially when the second language is the target language this intention will often have a great difficulty, since the second language is normally less active than the first language. Even though all the three language-competition models are all support the nonselectivity hypothesis, they argued about the locus of the competition. Instead of picking up one certain model to say strictly which is the best to persuasive that hypothesis, Kroll (2006) raised an assumption to conclude that the fixed locus does not exist, the nonselectivity or competition actually present through all levels of speech production.
All those studies possessed great property. Not only because that the population of bilinguals have showed a larger percentage than the monolinguals. Most crucially, that’s because that the first language and second language influences each other, the native language of bilinguals’ get the opportunity to emerge a clearer process of speech performance, which can be utilized for observing the actual process of language system performance.
This paper is now rolling up, just before that, hopefully it made the points sufficiently clear to claim the assumption that the different languages are not hermetically sealed off from one another in bilinguals, which actually are nonselectivity at all levels of speech production procedure.
References
Abutalebi, J., Cappa, S. F. & Perani, D. (2005). Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S.C. & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech*
Bloem and La Heij (2003) and Bloem (2004) Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S.C. & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech*
Kello, Plaut and MacWhinney (2002) Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S.C. & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech*
Kroll, J. F (2006). Kroll, J. F., Bobb, S.C. & Wodniecka, Z. (2006). Language selectivity is the exception, not the rule: Arguments against a fixed locus of language selection in bilingual speech*
Hermans, D. (2000) Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University.
