This volume is the outcome of the author’s observations and puzzlement over seventeen years of teaching English and French as second languages, followed by 30 years of research into the neurolinguistic aspects of bilingualism.
It examines, within the framework of a neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism (Paradis, 2004), the crucial and pervasive contributions made by declarative and procedural memory to the appropriation, representation and processing of a second language.
This requires careful consideration of a number of concepts associated with issues pertaining to second language research: consciousness, interface, modularity, automaticity, proficiency, accuracy, fluency, intake, ultimate attainment, switching, implicit linguistic competence and explicit metalinguistic knowledge. It is informed by data from a variety of domains, including language pathology, neuroimaging, and, from each side of the fence, practical classroom experience. This book introduces four further proposals within the framework of a neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism:
(1) There are two sets of cerebral representations, those that are capable of reaching consciousness and those that are not; implicit grammar is inherently not capable of reaching consciousness. (2) The increased activation observed in neuroimaging studies during the use of a second language is not devoted to the processing of implicit linguistic competence. (3) Intake is doubly implicit. (4) Given the premise that metalinguistic knowledge cannot be converted into implicit competence, there can be no possible interface between the two.
Table of contents
Preface
ix–xii
Chapter 1. Key concepts, framework, and clarifications
1-35
Chapter 2. Consciousness in L2 appropriation
37-60
Chapter 3. The disintegration of the implicit/explicit interface debate (or interface newspeak?)
61-107
Chapter 4. Ultimate attainment in L2 proficiency
109-136
Chapter 5. Pervasive relevance of the distinction between implicit competence and explicit knowledge
137-186
Summary of key proposals
187-190
References
191-215
Subject index
217-219
This volume provides a state-of-the-art treatment of research on language attrition, the non-pathological loss of a language through lack of exposure. It combines a review of past and present research with in-depth treatments of specific theoretical and methodological issues and reports on individual studies.
