Three languages in mind : How activation, inhibition and control processes underly trilingual lexical production

ISBN-13: 9783639146363 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 236 str.

Julia Festman

Opis

How does a trilingual manage to speak only one fromamong the three languages s/he masters? Thisaccessible book examines the psycholinguisticunderpinnings of trilingualism and describes themechanisms (activation, inhibition andcontrol) taken from cognitive psychology as well asthe impact of language proficiency and processing load.Introductory chapters focus on the description oftrilinguals and trilingual processing. Afterreviewing models of language production, the firstmodel for trilingualism is presented. Four stages oflanguage production (access, search, competition, andselection) and a number of lexical phenomena areexamined in detail in four experimental studies withdifferent methodologies on spontaneous languageproduction in three languages. A language backgroundquestionnaire is also included. This book is especially useful for students andresearchers interested in psycholinguistics and itsmethods, in multilingualism, and for allmultilinguals who always wanted to understand whythey sometimes say something in the wrong language.

O autorze

Julia Festman, M.A., Ph.D.: studied German and French
Linguistics/Literature at University of Bamberg and Humboldt
University Berlin, and English Linguistics at Bar Ilan
University. Project Manager (DFG) at Otto-von-Guericke University
Magdeburg/Neuropsychology on Bilinguals control of language
interference and its relation to executive functions.