Advances in the Study of Bilingualism

on the manner and the locus of language selection. Language-specific selec-
tion models postulate that alternative candidates are active but only ones
from the intended language are considered for selection. In other words, both
English lexical representations ( , ) and Spanish lexical repre-
sentations ( , ) are active but only the English ones are
considered for selection. These models assume that the bilingual’s intention
to speak the target language allows him or her to selectively attend to can-
didates from the target language (e.g. Costa & Caramazza, 1999; Costa et al.,
1999; Costa & Santesteban, 2004) or alternatively the bilingual’s intention
can set the level of activation of candidates from the target language higher
than from the non-target language (e.g. Finkbeiner et al., 2006). In these
cases, when a candidate is selected, the language of the candidate has already
been selected. In contrast, according to language-nonspecific models, not
only candidates from the target language but also those from the non-target
language compete for selection and the activation of the non-target language
needs to be inhibited (e.g. Green, 1998; Hermans et al., 1998; Kroll et al., 2008;
Lee & Williams, 2001; Meuter & Allport, 1999; Philipp & Koch, 2009).
Some studies suggest that both languages are active at the lexical level but
only ones from the intended language are encoded into phonological forms
(e.g. Hermans et al., 1998; Lee & Williams, 2001; Meuter & Allport, 1999);
that is, language selection occurs at the lexical level. Others suggest that

Language Selection During Speech Production in Bilingual Speakers 203

Adapted from Poulisse and Bongaerts (1994)

and Hermans (2000)

Lexical level

tarta gato perro dog cat pie

Phonological level

Language cue:

Conceptual cues: + English

Conceptual level

/g/ /a//t//o/ /k//æ//t/

Phonetic level

[g] [a][t][o] [k][æ][t]

Figure 9.1 A model of nonselective lexical activation (adapted from Poulisse &
Bongaerts, 1994 and Hermans, 2000)