Advances in the Study of Bilingualism

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Introduction: Advances in the

Study of Bilingualism

Enlli Môn Thomas and Ineke Mennen

Bilingualism, as a research discipline, has experienced an explosion of activity
in recent years. Although we are yet to unravel the full complexities, intrica-
cies and wonders of the bilingual mind, we have come a very long way in our
knowledge and understanding of bilingualism and how it differs from the less
common state of monolingualism. New speech studies have led to a better
understanding of how bilinguals manage two (possibly competing) sound
systems, which in turn has helped us identify what is learned phonetic behav-
iour and has informed models of phonetic/phonological representation.
Recent developmental studies have emphasised the dynamic cross-linguistic
interaction between a bilingual child’s two languages in both linguistic and
non-linguistic domains. Current linguistic analyses show that the use of two
languages in the same conversation does not happen at random, but is con-
strained in ways that we are just beginning to understand. Advances in edu-
cational research allow us to provide a holistic perspective on the use of two
languages and literacies in interaction at school. Neuroscientific and experi-
mental studies have revealed far more processing interaction between the
languages of a bilingual than was previously suspected, even in the context
of monolingual language use.
As bilingualism, by definition, is highly diverse, many books present a
broad introduction to its study. More recently, however, and in line with
developments in peer-reviewed research journals of bilingualism since the
1980s, there has been a marked increase in the number of volumes that con-
centrate on specific aspects of the study of bilingualism. Such volumes pres-
ent detailed treatments of bilingualism from a particular disciplinary
perspective (psycholinguistics or neurolinguistics, for example), allowing for
the expansion of our knowledge and understanding of the factors that under-
lie various aspects of bilingualism from within that perspective.