SUMMARY In their introductory chapter, the authors state the goal of their book: to provide a general introduction to the

study of bilingualism from a psycholinguistic point of vie ! "heir intent is e#plicitly pedagogical and they aim for accessibility rather than all$inclusive coverage! Moreover, they highlight the effort to %give the various areas of the psycholinguistics of bilingualism e&ual eight' (p! )*! "hey also present approaches, methodologies, resources and tools recently applied to studies in the field! +ran,ois -ros.ean begins the first chapter (/0ilingualism: A Short Introduction/* ith a definition of bilingualism $$ and multilingualism $$ that ill accompany the reader throughout the hole book: %the use of t o or more languages (or dialects* in everyday life' (p! 1*! 2e dispels some myths about bilinguals (e!g! as natural translators and having no accent in their languages*, and discusses several criteria to describe bilingualism! 2e accounts for fluency, use, time, language history, language loss, in a dynamic process that he labels /the a# and ane of languages/, then presents his 3omplementary 4rinciple (-ros.ean )556* and the notion of language mode! "he last t o paragraphs focus on the analysis of monolingual and bilingual interaction $$ ith particular emphasis on code$mi#ing phenomena $$, and to biculturalism, respectively! "he second chapter (/Speech 4erception and 3omprehension/* opens Section I (Spoken 7anguage 4rocessing*! 2ere -ros.ean briefly illustrates the general process of speech recognition and the creation of a mental representation of meaning! 2e then discusses a centrepiece in the study of bilingualism: the processing of bilingual speech! Recent studies in psycholinguistics, revie ed here, agree that language processing is nonselective most of the time! "his means that, hen a bilingual hears input, it does not activate separate processing mechanisms, but rather the bilingual/s language systems simultaneously! 3aution should be e#ercised, though, as several factors may influence this process, to the point that it can be even transformed into a selective process in essence! +or instance, hen the input contains elements that are not shared bet een the bilingual/s t o languages, language$specific elements are likely to activate only the corresponding language system! 2e then revie s the base$language effect and several studies on the recognition of code$mi#ing in bilingual speech! 2e concludes by presenting 78 y and -ros.ean/s %computational model of bilingual le#ical access' (p! 9:*, 0IM;7A (adapted from -ros.ean <==>*! 3hapter three (/Speech 4roduction/* is the last ritten by -ros.ean, and closes the first section! Its central aim is to investigate hether language production in bilinguals is language selective or nonselective! "he chapter begins ith an in$depth analysis of our internal mechanisms that transform thought into speech! It covers the topic of monolingual speech production in bilinguals, providing e#perimental evidence that %both languages of a bilingual are .ointly activated even in conte#ts that strongly bias to ard one of them' (p! 1?*! As a conse&uence, -ros.ean argues that the t o languages are activated along a continuum, i!e! they can be less or more stimulated, or have diverse activation states, but they actively coe#ist in a dynamic process! "he chapter ends ith an account of spoken code$s itching phenomena, asking hether they take more processing time than monolingual speech and also hether they e#hibit regularities among languages, speakers and utterances! Annette M!0! de -root launches the Section II of the book $$ @ritten 7anguage 4rocessing $$ ith a chapter elo&uently entitled /Reading/! Ae -root introduces basic components of the reading process, from the orthographic level (the activation of suble#ical and le#ical memory units*, through corresponding phonological representations, to the recognition of meaning and mental representation! ;ne additional step, re&uired to move to meaning at the sentence and te#t level, is parsing! In the end, the information ill trigger the reader/s background kno ledge for final comprehension! She revie s a number of e#periments on ord recognition in bilingual individuals, mostly conducted using tests on homographs, neighbours and cognates! 0ased on the results, she

suggests that bilingual ord recognition may be language nonselective at both the le#ical and the phonological activation levels! Several computational models of visual ord recognition are then presented, most notably 0IA, S;42IA, 0IAB! In the end, de -root summariCes the findings of even more studies conducted on the sentence processingD she reports that monolinguals and bilinguals seem to undergo a similar semantic processing, hile they have a &ualitatively different syntactic processing $$ based on the proficiency in the language! Rosa M! ManchEn provides the final chapter of the Section II: /@riting/! 2er goal is to %e#plore the defining characteristics of bilingual te#t production processes' (p! )==*, and she pursues it by initially e#plaining the general process of riting (condensed into three phases: planning, formulation, revision*! 7ater, she compares the riting processes and strategies of monolinguals and bilinguals, highlighting the results of several studies! 0roadly, it seems that bilingual riters tend to rely more on their first language and its specific /higher$order/ strategies, even hen riting in another language! "his mediator role of the 7) seems to hold also at advanced levels of 7< proficiency! ManchEn closes by discussing possible transfers of riting skills across the bilingual/s languages! She agrees ith 3umming ()5>5* that these skills may be indeed transferable, but she advises the reader that such analyses of riting performance need to be combined ith further variables, like language proficiency, general riting e#pertise and education! Section III, on 7anguage Ac&uisition, is introduced by chapter si# (/Simultaneous 7anguage Ac&uisition/*! Firginia Yip covers a foundational topic in psycholinguistics, i!e! the ac&uisition of t o or more languages in the early childhood! +rom the beginning, she adopts the notion of 0ilingual +irst 7anguage Ac&uisition (0+7A*, to distinguish the peculiar state of bilingual children and avoid easy stereotypes, like their having t o mother tongues! In fact, she points out that %GiHn the case of simultaneous ac&uisition of t o languages, neither language can be said to come first, G!!!H although in practice a dominant or stronger language can often be identified' (p! )<=*! Yip e#amines several theoretical and methodological issues, like the &uantity of input and its effects on the child/s language ac&uisitionD the natural unbalanced developmentD the domains of 7a and 7I useD cross$linguistic influencesD language pairs, mode, choice, and dominanceD data collection! In the end, the author sho s the stages of language development in early bilinguals as compared to that of monolingual children! She also accounts for code$mi#ing and cross$linguistic influences, hich are reported in preschool bilinguals! Jventually, she e#tends the discussion to include trilinguals, briefly mentioning both &uantitative and &ualitative differences in their language development! 3hapter seven ends the section on language ac&uisition, and analyses /Successive 7anguage Ac&uisition/! 4ing 7i suggests than, in this case, %there is a relatively clear distinction bet een the learner/s first language and second language' (p! )91* $$ the first being most likely native and dominant, hile the second is added later, and is probably eaker, less used andKor confined in a domain! "he author revie s the effect of age in S7A (second language ac&uisition* conte#ts! 2e challenges the notion of a critical period and lists the main e#perimental data that has brought researchers to prefer the term /age of ac&uisition/ (AoA*! 7< AoA does in fact e#plain some evidence in comparisons of early bilinguals ith adult language learners, such as the discrimination and the production of non$native sounds! 7i then discusses the influences that 7) and 7< e#ert on each other in adult learners, such as the ac&uisition of le#icon and its relationship ith pre$e#isting concepts, cross$language interactions and the ac&uisition of grammar! 2e concludes by confirming that, as stated throughout the book, the interplay bet een the t o languages is indeed dynamic, even hen they are ac&uired se&uentially! 3hapter eight (/0ilingual Memory/* opens Section IF on 3ognition and the 0ilingual 0rain! Ae -root takes into account the long$term declarative memory, mainly in the form of semantic memory! She begins ith @einreich/s ()51?* traditional description of bilingualism (coordinative,

compound, subordinative* and e#amines the ongoing chronology of studies and models on the organisation of the bilingual mental le#icon! She emphasises more recent models that do %not represent a ord/s meaning in a single memory unit Gbut assumeH /distributed/ representations, here the ord/s meaning is spread out over a number of more elementary conceptual units' (p! )66*, such as de -root ()55<* and Aong et al! (<==1*! At a later stage, the author e#pands to include the attainment of semantic differences bet een languages in bilinguals! In the end, she presents e#perimental data on episodic memory, sho ing that language is encoded in bilinguals/ autobiographical memory traces! Jllen 0ialystok and Raluca 0arac co$author chapter nine (/3ognitive Jffects/*! "hey aim is to demonstrate that bilingualism has a po erful effect on the development and the conservation of crucial cognitive skills! "hey first take into account language and metalinguistic abilities, revie ing data from tests of monolinguals/ and bilinguals/ language proficiency! "hey state that, hen all other possible influencing factors are removed, bilingualism is very likely to be responsible for %enhanced metalinguistic a areness L for different aspects of language: syntactic a areness, !!! ord a areness L and, to a lesser e#tent, phonological a areness' (p! )5:*! "his is probably true, they add, especially hen the child/s t o languages share the same alphabet and a similar phonology! "he riters sho that bilingualism speeds up the ac&uisition of literacy, because it enhances related cognitive skills M the ones that are usually kno n as being part of the e#ecutive control system! "hese skills include %attention, selection, inhibition, monitoring, and fle#ibility' (p! <=<*! 0ialystok and 0arac do not .ust focus on early bilingualism, though! "hey conclude by highlighting the positive effects of speaking t o languages in adulthood and provide that bilingualism may significantly delay dementia in older age! "he last chapter (/Neurolinguistic and Neurocomputational Models/*, by 7i, chronicles the connections bet een neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics in the field of bilingualism $$ ith a particular emphasis on recent models and tools! 7i offers a brief history of neurolinguistics and its debates on brain localisation and organisation, as ell as the never$ending search for a /language s itch/ in the head! "hen he describes the current horiCon on cognitive neuroscience, along ith t o relatively ne techni&ues: event$related potentials (JR4s* and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI*! 2is goal is to introduce the reader to these no idely available neuroimaging tools, and to describe the results that researchers have achieved ith them to date (e!g! the /electrophysiological signatures/ of bilingualism*! "he last paragraph covers neurolinguistic computational modeling! 2ere the author revie s several models based on connectionist frame orksD among others, 0IM;7A, 0IA, S;M0I4 and its evolution Aev7e# (7i et al! <==9*! JFA7UA"I;N "he 4sycholinguistics of 0ilingualism surely keeps its promises! -ros.ean, 7i and the other authors provide a holistic introduction to the field, and they succeed in presenting the content in an informative, clear and accessible ay! Undergraduate students are mentioned in the Introduction as a possible audience, and I ould agree: several features of the book make it an e#cellent handbook for people those approaching the study of bilingualism from a psycholinguistic point of vie ! "he chapters are all brief (ca! <= pages long* structured in parallel fashion, ith an initial presentation of topics and aims, three to four main sections and several subsections! Jvery chapter ends ith three or four research &uestions, a bo# ith further advised readings and the references pertaining to the chapter! "he language used is also accessible: technicalities are e#plained and conte#tualised, yielding a gain in clarity ithout a loss in authority! 4ictures and diagrams are provided hen describing theoretical models and e#perimental practices! +or the researcher, the book is an up$to$date /summa/ of the study of bilingualism, and one may

appreciate the thorough revie embedded in the chapters (unfortunately, the handbook$like structure does not provide a separate section for literature revie * and the in$depth analyses of e#periments and tests $$ paragraphs that students are more likely to underestimate and skip! +urthermore, scholars ill value the sections describing approaches, methodologies and techni&ues used by fello colleagues! Researchers and students of language education, and perhaps language teachers, may also find this book interesting! It ill not provide ready$to$use kno ledge, but also important insights that can be put into practice (and turn into interesting data*! "o complete the picture, the book is coherent, progresses smoothly, and is overall very ell edited (I as able to spot only some minor inconsistencies in the reference style*! "his book e#ceeded my e#pectations, and I find it difficult to point out shortcomings, as it is perfectly aligned ith its declared aims! I did e#pect to find a section or a bo# on sign languageD this topic, ho ever, probably fell outside the scope determined by the authors, and is never mentioned! RJ+JRJN3JS 3umming, Alister! )5>5! @riting e#pertise and second language proficiency! 7anguage 7earning ?5! >)$)9)! Ae -root, Annette! )55<! 0ilingual le#ical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations! In Ram +rost O 7eonard PatC (eds*, ;rthography, 4honology, Morphology, and Meaning, pp! <6$1)! AmsterdamK4hiladelphia: Qohn 0en.amins! Aong, Yanping, -ui, Shichun O Mac@hinney, 0rian! <==1! Shared and separate meanings in the bilingual mental le#icon! 0ilingualism: 7anguage and 3ognition >! <<)$<?>! -ros.ean, +ran,ois! )556! "he 0ilingual Individual! Interpreting <()K<*! ):?$)>6! -ros.ean, +ran,ois! <==>! Studying 0ilinguals! ;#ford: ;#ford University 4ress! 7i, 4ing, +arkas, Igor O Mac@hinney, 0rian! <==9! Jarly le#ical development in a self$organiCing neural net ork! Neural Net orks )6! )?91$)?:<! @einreich, Uriel! )51?! 7anguages in 3ontact: +indings and 4roblems! Ne York: 7inguistic 3ircle of Ne York!