Chapter 5. Unravelling cross-language effects in bimodal bilingualism

Abstract

Suppose we are good tennis players and want to learn to play ping-pong. Does the way we play tennis affect how we play ping-pong? Would we play ping-pong in the same way if we were not tennis experts? This was one of Albert’s recurring metaphors when drawing a line of thought toward language interactions in bilingual language processing. The argument behind the anecdote referred to what extent the sustained interaction between bilinguals’ two languages results in structural changes within the language network. This chapter aims to push the tennis metaphor one step further by asking whether playing tennis affects how we play football, a sport involving quite different skills. Bringing the sports metaphor into language, this chapter reviews interactions occurring between bilinguals’ two languages involving different articulatory and perceptual mechanisms, such as sign and oral languages. This chapter is then devoted to bimodal bilingualism, reviewing the most relevant results on cross-linguistic interactions across modalities.