monolingual during a monolingual interaction. Alternatively, it is possible
that processing is in some way affected by knowledge of the syntactic rules
of the other language, even though that language is not actively being used.
In the blue car example above, this would mean that when a Welsh-English
bilingual is in a situation where English is the only language that is being
spoken, his/her knowledge of the existence of a car blue word order (in Welsh)
manifests itself in some way.
Recent electrophysiological studies have provided some evidence on how
the brain of a bilingual deals with grammar, and to what extent this differs
from the behaviour of a monolingual brain. Specifically, the question on
which recent research has focused is whether the brain of bilinguals has the
same sensitivity to syntactic violations as that of monolinguals, and which
are the factors that determine the level of sensitivity (example violation ((2))
a from Weber-Fox & Neville, 1996):
(2) a. The scientist criticised Max’s of proof the theorem.
b. The scientist criticised Max’s proof of the theorem.
The sentence in ((2))a contains a syntactic violation, shown in italics; com-
pare this with ((2))b, the corresponding grammatical sentence.
Even though sentences that violate grammar are not a typical element of
our everyday language exposure, they provide a suitable field of comparison
between bilingual and monolingual populations, as the processing of such
structures in monolinguals has been studied extensively and discrete pat-
terns of how the monolingual brain responds to them have been identified
(see Friederici et al., 1996; Gunter et al., 1999; Munte et al., 1993; Neville et al.,
1991, among many others). In this type of studies, participants are generally
presented (visually or auditorily) with sentences containing syntactic viola-
tions, such as ((2))a, and the corresponding grammatical sentences, such as
((2))b, while brain activity is being measured using event related potentials
(ERPs) –a method derived from electro-encephalography (EEG)– to deter-
mine the effect of the violation (for more technical information on the prin-
ciples of ERP research, see Chapter 9).
Research utilising EEG/ERPs, has shown that brain responses to syntac-
tic violations in monolinguals consist of two main stages; the first is a neg-
ative-going wave at around 400 milliseconds after exposure to the violation,
called Left Anterior Negativity (LAN, Friederici et al., 1996; Munte et al.,
1993) and the second is a positive modulation over parietal regions of the
scalp peaking at around 600 ms (P600, e.g. Neville et al., 1991; Osterhout &
Holcomb, 1992). In some cases the former wave has been found to peak a
little earlier, and it is then known as Early Left Anterior Negativity (or EL A N,
Friederici et al., 1996; Gunter et al., 1999; Neville et al., 1991).
In bilinguals, exposure to syntactic violations has been reported to trigger
different patterns of brain activity compared to monolinguals. Relevant
Juggling Two Grammars 215