The notion of bilingualism refers to all those people who use or simply know two or more languages, including dialects (Grosjean, 1994 ). Just to provide some fi gures, let us consider that something like 7,000 languages are spoken in barely 160 countries. Furthermore, in many of these countries the number of spoken languages is constantly growing due to massive immigration. This means that ove...

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between bilingualism and phonological awareness by re-evaluating structural sensitivity theory and expanding cross-language transfer theory. The study was conducted with three groups of 1st and 2nd graders matched in age, SES and non-verbal IQ: a) monolingual English-speaking children from a general education program, b) native Japanese-...

Four advanced breeding lines of wheat which had appeared to be resistant to stripe rust in the past years along with a susceptible variety, Bolani, were intercrossed in all combinations of a half-diallel design. Seedlings were grown in greenhouse until the first leaves fully expanded and then inoculated with two pathotypes (races) 6E134A+ and 134E148A+, separately. Days to the first pustule eru...

During the last decade, much attention has been paid to language competition in the complex systems community, that is, how the fractions of speakers of several competing languages evolve in time. In this paper we review recent advances in this direction and focus on three aspects. First we consider the shift from two-state models to three state models that include the possibility of bilingual ...

A quantitative analysis of a trans-generational, conversational corpus of Chintang (Tibeto-Burman) speakers with community-wide bilingualism in Nepali (Indo-European) reveals that children show more code-switching into Nepali than older speakers. This confirms earlier proposals in the literature that code-switching in bilingual children decreases when they gain proficiency in their dominant lan...

The relationship between stuttering and bilingualism to functional cerebral hemispheric processing was examined using a visual hemifield paradigm. Eighty native German speakers, half of whom were also proficient speakers of English as a second language (L2), were recruited. The participants were organised into four different groups according to speech status and language ability: 20 monolingual...

In recent years bilingualism has been linked to both advantages in executive control and positive impacts on aging. Such positive cognitive effects of bilingualism have been attributed to the increased need for language control during bilingual processing and increased cognitive reserve, respectively. However, a mechanistic explanation of how bilingual experience contributes to cognitive reserv...

The question of who is and who is not a bilingual is more difficult to answer than it first appears. Bilingualism was long regarded as the equal mastery of two languages, a definition that still prevails in certain glossaries of linguistics. However, today's complex world requires a more exact definition and analysis of the competencies that community members require to interact with speakers o...

BACKGROUND Bilingualism may contribute to cognitive reserve, protect against cognitive decline, and delay the onset of dementia. OBJECTIVE We systematically reviewed evidence about the effect of bilingualism on subsequent cognitive decline or dementia. METHODS We searched electronic databases and references for longitudinal studies comparing cognitive decline in people who were bilingual wi...