ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, we have discussed a number of phenomena related to lexical processing and second language acquisition. We have reviewed models that explain general-level language phenomena as well as more specialized models that explain performance in a specific range of contexts and for particular stimuli or tasks. In general, we concluded that a bilingual’s two languages are often active even when only one is needed for the task, to at least some point in processing. We have also learned that there is a debate surrounding the way that particular kinds of words are processed and represented, with cognates and interlingual homo-graphs playing a central role in this research. Researchers also disagree about the nature of the interconnections among representations in bilingual memory. The inconsistent evidence in these areas of research may be resolved in the future as we gain more converging data from cognitive neuroscientific methods.
