ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part focuses on the psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism. It consists of two sections: ‘Bilingual processing’ and ‘The bilingual brain’. The part offers a critical review of psycholinguistic models of bilingual memory. It examines the evidence for the various views on how the memory stores are connected and what the implications are for bilingual word processing, more precisely for the way forms are mapped to meaning and vice versa. The part reviews a number of psycholinguistic studies of bilingual speech production and perception which have apparently given rise to conflicting results. It proposes the concept of ‘language mode’, which assumes that the language system of the bilingual is organised into two subsets that can be activated and deactivated independently of one another, or activated simultaneously, each to a particular degree.
