Language-specific cues: A cue to language?

A key issue in psycholinguistic research on the nature of the coexistence of two (or more) languages in the cognitive system of a fluent bilingual speaker include the nature of lexical access (selective vs non-selective). In the context of the non-selective access view, we investigate the extent to which sub-lexical information (eg languagespecific cues, such as onset capitals for German nouns) is sufficient to constrain or eliminate lexical interaction between the bilingual’s languages. We also consider the extent to which the use of such information is affected by priming for a specific language from a preceding sentential context. To gain insight, experimental data from English-German bilinguals from three different proficiency levels was collected,who listened to a sentence frame in either L1 or L2, and then performed a German(L2) lexical decision task to a word presented visually immediately after the frame.Error data shows that language-specific cues have an increasingly facilitatory effect on lexical access with increasing proficiency levels. In addition, context languageeffects decrease with increasing proficiency level. Response time analyses, on the other hand, reveal a delay for German-biased items, ie those with onset capitalisation. We discuss these results in the context of models of bilingual language processing