An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

Figure 7.2 Airport cartoon used to elicit examples of questions from a group of young learners 
of L2 English
• Using the information in Figure 7.1, determine what stage each question 
represents. Remember that you are not asked to determine whether the question 
is grammatically correct, but which stage it corresponds to.
• In your opinion, which student appears to be the most advanced? Why? Which 
student is the least advanced? Why?

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122 An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
• Some of the questions produced on this task appear to be more advanced than 
the questions which the same students produced in an oral interaction task. 
How would you explain this?
• If you know French, look for examples of interlanguage features that you think 
may be influenced by the students’ L1.
Asking Questions at the Airport
An airport is a very busy place. People ask for directions. They ask for help with 
their baggage. Some people need information about renting cars or taking taxis. 
Sometimes children get lost.
In the picture (see Figure 7.2), people are asking questions. For example, 
Number 4 seems to be asking, ‘What time is it?’
On the lines below, write the question that you think each person is asking.
1 ?
• 
• 
• 
11 ?
Stage
Student A
1 
Do you need something? 
1
2 
Why did you bring this bomb? 
2
3 
Where do I put the money, boss? 
3
4 
Hey, short stuff. What time is it? 
4
5 
Why are you crying little boy? 
5
6 
Hey mom! It looks like your ugly skirt! 
6
7 
What did you find on this terrorist, agent 007? 
7
8 
Can I have a coke please? 
8
9 
Do you [have] a big uncomfeterble car, Mrs? 
9
10 
Where’s gate number 5? 
10
11 
Dad, are you sure you can bring this alone? 
11
Student B
1 
Everting is okay? 
1
2 
It’s normal to have guns in your countries? 
2
3 
What’s the mission for today boss? 
3
4 
When do you go to Quebec City? 
4
5 
Are you loss litle baby? 
5
6 
It’s that your socks? 
6
7 
It’s you on this passports? 
7
8 
It’s that good? 
8
9 
Do you pay cash or on the credit card? 
9
10 
Where’s the gate 5? 
10
11 
Do you pass a go [good?] time at the logan airport? 
11

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123
Second Language Acquisition
Student C
1 
Do you want something to drink? 
1
2 
What do you have in your trunk? 
2
3 
Where do I have to go? 
3
4 
Do you have the hour? 
4
5 
Do you want milk? 
5
6 
Do you like my new shoes? 
6
7 
Do you have your passport? 
7
8 
Do you have beer? 
8
9 
Do you like this car? 
9
10 
Mister, do you know where is the gate 5? 
10
11 
Can I know witch one is my trunk? 
11

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Psycholinguistics
Kees de Bot
University of Groningen
Judith F. Kroll
Pennsylvania State University
What is Psycholinguistics?
Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive processes that support the 
acquisition and use of language. The scope of psycholinguistics includes language 
performance under normal circumstances and when it breaks down, for example, 
following brain damage. Historically, the focus of most psycholinguistics has been 
on the first language (L1), in studies of acquisition in children and in research on 
adult comprehension and production. The questions that have been the focus of 
investigation include:
• What is the nature of the input that is critical for language to develop?
• To what extent is this developmental process biologically constrained?
• How are words recognized when listening to speech or reading text?
• How do we understand sentences and texts?
• By what means are lexical and syntactic ambiguities resolved?
• How are abstract thoughts mapped onto utterances prior to speaking?
• How is language processed in the brain?
More recently, psycholinguists have recognized the importance of extending the 
study of language processing to individuals who are acquiring or actively using 
more than one language. (In this chapter, the term ‘bilinguals’ is used to refer to 
such individuals, even though their additional languages may not be as strong as 
their L1.) Because bilinguals outnumber monolinguals in the world’s population, 
bilinguals more than monolinguals provide a genuinely universal account of the 
cognitive mechanisms that underlie language performance. Furthermore, the 
use of two or more languages provides a powerful tool for investigating issues 
of cognitive representation and processing that are otherwise hidden from view. 
Specific questions with respect to bilinguals are:
• Is L2 acquisition different from L1 acquisition?
• To what extent does the L1 play a role in using the L2?
• Are there rules governing code-switching (the use of more than one language 
in an utterance)?
• How do speakers of more than one language keep the two languages apart?
• How are languages acquired at some point in time lost or maintained over time?
• How are multiple languages processed in the brain?
In this chapter we provide a selective review of some recent illustrative 
psycholinguistic research on second language (L2) acquisition and competent 
bilingual performance. This work is framed by an important set of assumptions 
about language and cognition. First, we assume that the cognitive processes that are 
revealed as individuals acquire proficiency in a second language share a common 
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Psycholinguistics
basis with the processes that are in place for competent bilinguals. Although we do 
not intend to downplay aspects of development that may differentially influence 
performance over the course of acquisition, the basic assumption is that L2 learners 
and proficient bilinguals rely on similar cognitive mechanisms. Second, we 
assume that these mechanisms are generally universal across languages, although 
the relative importance of some factors may differ depending on the structural 
properties of the languages involved. For example, whether the L2 shares the same 
alphabet with the L1 can have profound consequences for the nature of cross-
language interactions (see Chapter 13, Reading). Yet we assume that, fundamentally, 
the same cognitive resources are drawn upon when a native Chinese speaker learns 
English or a native English speaker learns French. Third, we assume that the same 
cognitive resources are universally available to all learners, although individuals 
will differ in some respects that may have specific implications for success in L2 
learning. For example, the degree to which individuals can devote memory and 
attentional resources to processing and storage may play an important role in their 
ability to develop automaticity in the L2, to resolve ambiguities during sentence 
comprehension and to inhibit the L1 when required to do so.
The chapter is outlined as follows. First, we focus on the way in which 
psycholinguists construct cognitive models to characterize the representations and 
processes that underlie language performance. Because our review will necessarily 
be brief, our illustration is restricted to a model of language production that has 
been extended to bilingual speakers. The model captures many of the core problems 
that need to be resolved when speakers have more than one language available:
• To what extent are the two languages kept separate?
• How is control effected so that words only from the intended language are 
spoken?
The model may also be used to illustrate the way in which psycholinguists formulate 
hypotheses and conduct experiments to test theoretically based predictions.
Second, we illustrate the contribution of psycholinguistic research by considering 
a set of selected questions that have been the focus of empirical work on second 
language learning and bilingualism. These include the non-selective nature of 
lexical access in word recognition, the development of lexical proficiency in L2 and 
aspects of language retention and attrition. One of our goals in this section is to 
illuminate the general logic and method of psychological approaches to research.
Third we present some research on code-switching that reflects some of the new 
trends in research on bilingualism, such as the use of neuro-imaging techniques 
and the shift from monologue to dialogue.
Finally, in the Hands-on Activity, we ask you to apply these ideas to the results 
of a study on the development of L2 lexical fluency.
Cognitive Models: Language Production in Bilinguals
Modelling Language Production of the Competent 
Bilingual
In psycholinguistics, researchers try to develop models to describe and preferably 
predict specific linguistic behaviour. The aim is to capture all aspects of language 
use. Ultimately, the goal is to have a model that describes how language is processed 

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126 An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
in our brains, but the link between functional models, that is, models that describe 
adequately how language functions in communication, and structures in the brain 
(neural substrates), is still underdeveloped. The creator of the model to be described 
below, the Dutch psycholinguist William Levelt, used the term ‘blueprint’, by 
which he means that this is probably the structure of the system as it really works 
in the brain, but where and how it is located in the brain is an active area of 
investigation (for example, see Abutelbi and Green, 2007). Levelt’s ‘Speaking’ 
model (1989, 1999) aims at describing the process of language production from 
the development of communicative intentions to the articulation of the sounds. 
For this incredibly complex process a number of sub-components, each performing 
specific tasks, are proposed. The first component is the ‘conceptualizer’ in which 
communicative intentions are turned into something that can be expressed in 
human language. This is more or less the level of our thinking. Though there has 
been considerable discussion about this, it is now generally accepted that most 
of our thinking does not take place in a form that is linguistic in nature, at any 
rate not in the linguistic forms we use while speaking. At this level utterances are 
planned on the basis of the meanings to be expressed. The second component is 
the ‘formulator’. Here, isolated words and meanings are turned into sentences that 
are translated accordingly into sounds by the third component, the articulator.
Let us look at the Levelt model in terms of lexis, especially as language 
production is largely lexically based. This means that we first select words, or to 
be more precise: lexical items, on the basis of the meanings we want to express. 
Then, through the activation of ‘lexical items’, syntactic procedures are triggered 
that lead to sentence formation. Lexical items consist of two parts, the ‘lemma’ 
and the morpho-phonological form or ‘lexeme’. In the lemma the lexical entry’s 
meaning and syntax are represented, whereas morphological and phonological 
properties are represented in the lexeme. In production, lexical items are activated 
by matching the meaning part of the lemma with the semantic information in 
the pre-verbal message. The selection of the lemmas with their meaning and 
syntactic information leads to the formation of the ‘surface structure’ (an ordered 
string of lemmas grouped in phrases and sub-phrases of various kinds (Levelt 
1989: 11). While the surface structure is being formed, the morpho-phonological 
information belonging to the lemma is activated and encoded. The phonological 
encoding provides the input for the articulator in the form of a phonetic plan, 
which leads to the spoken utterance.
As mentioned above, three levels are particularly relevant. At the conceptual 
level all information about a concept is stored. This includes, for instance, that a 
horse has four legs, that it can jump and pull carts, but also how it smells and how 
it sounds. The lemma level holds the semantic information required to match the 
conceptual and syntactic information necessary to arrive at a surface structure. 
Thus the lemma can be said to be the link between meaning and form. The 
distinction between three levels: conceptual, lemma and lexeme, is crucial to the 
model used here. Moreover, there is compelling evidence that the mind actually 
works in this manner, although the underlying mechanics of the process are not 
yet very clear. For example, concepts have a conceptual specification in which 
all the meaning components necessary to represent a communicative intention 
are represented. This conceptual specification serves to match a concept with a 
lemma. However, we are still not quite sure how this matching takes place and 
how a specific match is evaluated (that is, is there enough overlap between the 
specification in the concept and in the lemma).

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Psycholinguistics
The lemma/lexeme distinction figures in most theories in language. Evidence 
for this distinction comes from research on naturally occurring and elicited 
speech errors, aphasia, ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ phenomena and various experimental 
paradigms, such as word/picture naming.* There is no perfect one-to-one match 
between lemmas and lexemes, however. The activation of a lemma through the 
matching on the basis of the conceptual specification does not always lead to 
retrieval of the (right) lexeme, and the lexeme is not always retrieved as a whole. 
Evidence from speech errors such as ‘heft-lemisphere’ for ‘left-hemisphere’ show 
that the lexeme is not a ready-made template, but that it consists of a phonological 
frame in which phonological segments are inserted. The imperfect match between 
lemma and lexeme is very obvious in tip-of-the-tongue phenomena: in studies 
like those of Brown and McNeill (1966) and Jones and Langford (1987) subjects in 
a tip-of-the-tongue state appear to know the number of letters, the initial letter, 
the number of syllables and the syllable which carries primary stress well above 
chance level.
Levelt’s Speaking model is primarily a model of the fully competent monolingual 
speaker. In her discussion of learners of a foreign language as bilingual speakers, 
Poulisse (1997) mentions the following factors that have to be taken into account 
if we want to turn a monolingual model into a bilingual model:
• L2 knowledge is typically incomplete. L2 speakers generally have fewer 
words and rules at their disposal than L1 speakers. This may keep them from 
expressing messages they had originally intended to convey, lead them to use 
compensatory strategies, or to avoid words or structures about which they feel 
uncertain.
• L2 speech is more hesitant, and contains more errors and slips, depending on 
the level of proficiency of the learners. Cognitive skill theories such as Schneider 
and Shiffrin’s (1977) or Anderson’s ACT* (1983) stress the importance of the 
development of automatic processes that are difficult to acquire and hard to 
unlearn. Less automaticity means that more attention has to be paid to the 
execution of specific lower-level tasks (such as pronouncing difficult phonemes 
clearly), which leads to a slowing down of the production process and to a 
greater number of slips, because limited attentional resources have to be spent 
on lower-level processing.
• L2 speech often carries traces of the L1. L2 speakers have a fully developed 
L1 system at their disposal, and may switch to their L1 either deliberately 
(‘motivated’ switches) or unintentionally (‘performance’ switches). Switches to 
the L1 may, for example, be motivated by a desire to express group membership 
in conversations in which other bilinguals with the same L1 background