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François Grosjean, Studying bilinguals. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2008. Pp. vii+314.

Article in Journal of Linguistics · November 2009

DOI: 10.1017/S0022226709990089

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Reinhart, Tanya. 1981. Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica
27.1, 53–94.
Roberge, Yves. 1986. Subject doubling, free inversion and null argument languages. Canadian
Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 31, 55–79.
Zubizarreta, Marı́a Luisa. 1998. Prosody, focus, and word order (Linguistic Inquiry
Monographs 33). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Author’s address: Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia,
2136 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada
gervain@psych.ubc.ca
(Received 20 May 2009)

J. Linguistics 45 (2009). doi:10.1017/S0022226709990089

f Cambridge University Press 2009

François Grosjean, Studying bilinguals. Oxford : Oxford University Press,

2008. Pp. vii+314.

Reviewed by INEKE MENNEN, Bangor University

For students wanting to study bilingualism from a mostly psycholinguistic

perspective, François Grosjean’s Studying bilinguals is a good choice. It is
aimed at students in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and possibly
speech and language therapy. The cover’s claim that the book would also be
interesting to those studying sign language and the Deaf is perhaps overly
optimistic, given the limited space dedicated to this specific topic.
Studying bilinguals resulted from a special-options seminar on bilingual-
ism given by Grosjean at the University of Oxford in 2004, and it covers
Grosjean’s work over the past two and a half decades, since the publication
of his influential book Life with two languages (1982). The book is divided
into six parts covering four main areas of bilingualism. Parts I, ‘The
bilingual person ’, and II, ‘Language mode’, concern the bilingual speaker
and what it means to be bilingual. Parts III, ‘The base-language effect ’,
and IV, ‘ Spoken word recognition in bilinguals ’, cover the perception
and production of spoken language by bilinguals. Part V, ‘Biculturalism,
bilingualism and deafness’, covers the bilingualism of the Deaf, and the final
part, ‘ Methodological issues in bilingualism research ’, covers methodologi-
cal and conceptual issues in the field. Each part consists of two or three
chapters, the majority of which are reprints or part-reprints of earlier pub-
lications. The book is therefore a compilation of Grosjean’s previously
published work, with only a few chapters or parts of chapters written
specifically for the book.
As is often the case with compilations of previously published work, the
re-use of publications inevitably leads to some repetition and overlap.
Studying bilinguals does not escape this problem. Many of the main issues
and concepts (such as the base-language effect, language mode, code-
switching and code-borrowing) are dealt with over and over again. In itself,

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 JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS

this is not necessarily a bad thing, as repetition of the core issues in various
ways and contexts may actually help the student understand them better.
However, for the more experienced scholar it may become rather tiresome
at points. Another shortcoming of such compilations is that they are, by
definition, not the most up to date, unless supplemented wisely by chapters
covering more recent research.
After a brief ‘Introduction ’, outlining the structure of the book, chapter 2,
‘ A wholistic view of bilingualism ’, sets out the problems inherent in the
‘ monolingual (or fractional) view of bilingualism ’, a view which was preva-
lent for a long time, and opposes it to the more current ‘bilingual (or wholistic)
view of bilingualism ’ (9). Grosjean argues that the fractional view of bi-
lingualism has been responsible for the focus on studying balanced bilinguals
and the fact that they have usually been compared to the monolingual ideal.
According to the wholistic view, a situation of balance between the two
languages of a bilingual is unlikely, given that bilinguals use their languages
for different purposes and situations and therefore will have different needs
and uses of their languages. Grosjean argues that advances in the field of
bilingualism are likely to be made when we start investigating bilingualism
by studying real bilinguals (rather than searching for the ‘ true ’ or ‘balanced ’
bilingual), in real situations (where two or more languages may be used both
separately and together) which meet speakers’ real communicative needs
(which are likely to differ for each language), and not in relation to the ‘ideal ’
bilingual (11). Chapter 3, ‘The complementarity principle and language
restructuring ’, delves a bit deeper into the differing, situation-dependent
needs of the bilingual. As a result of the complementarity principle, one
should expect bilinguals to have different fluency levels in each language
rather than behave like two perfect monolinguals, with fluency levels equal
to monolinguals in each of their languages. Another effect of the com-
plementarity principle is that it may cause the weaker language of a bilingual
to restructure itself under the influence of the stronger language.
Chapters 4, ‘The bilingual’s language mode ’, and 5, ‘Manipulating
language mode ’, belong to the second part of the book. Language mode is
defined as ‘the state of activation of the bilingual’s languages and language
processing mechanisms at a given point in time ’ (39). In these two chapters,
Grosjean argues that it is important to control for language mode – although
he argues that this is rarely done adequately – given that it influences the
bilingual’s language behaviour in various ways (such as the amount and type
of mixing, the frequency of base-language changes, and the ease of proces-
sing of the languages). Chapter 5 presents some studies where language mode
has been experimentally manipulated, and it elaborates on the reasons why
language mode (in particular the monolingual mode) is so difficult to control
for.
Part III explores the base-language (also called ‘host ’ or ‘matrix ’ language)
effect in perception and production. Chapters 6, ‘The base-language effect in

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speech perception’, and 7, ‘ Base-language effect and categorical perception’,

present evidence for the existence of a base-language effect in perception,
using different experimental paradigms such as the Phoneme-Triggered
Lexical Decision Task (PTLD), gating studies, categorical perception
studies, and naming studies. All in all, the evidence points to a strong effect
of the base language on perception. As for production, there appear to be
different effects of the base language for segments and for prosody, as de-
scribed in chapter 8, ‘Is there a base language effect in speech production ?’.
This chapter, the first section of which is reprinted from Grosjean & Miller
(1994), examines whether the phonetic aspects of the base language carry
over into the guest language. At the segmental level, it appears that there are
no effects of the base language on code-switching (as measured by means of
voice onset time), with the switch fully adopting the phonetic properties of
the guest language. It is a shame, though, that Grosjean does not discuss any
of the evidence from studies that appeared after publication of the Grosjean
& Miller (1994) article, such as Toribio, Bullock, Botero & Davis (2005),
which contradict findings of a seamless switch from base language to the
guest language.
As for the prosodic level, Grosjean presents some evidence that the code-
switch does not always adopt the prosodic pattern of the guest language.
Short code-switches may in fact be fully prosodically integrated into the base
language (i.e. showing a base-language effect), whereas longer code-switches
may carry the guest language prosody. Although this finding is rather in-
triguing, Grosjean acknowledges that the prosodic data come from a rather
limited pilot study, and this finding needs to be substantiated by further
research. I would like to add here that the evidence appears to be based on a
visual inspection of only three intonation contours involving code-switching
and one involving a lexical borrowing. Any interpretation of these can only
be tentative in nature. Furthermore, the term prosody appears to be used
here to refer only to intonation ; no other prosodic effects, such as those
pertaining to rhythm, stress, or duration, have been investigated. It might be
useful for future research to examine a wider range of prosodic and seg-
mental aspects in code-switching and borrowing.
Spoken word recognition in bilinguals is examined in a series of exper-
iments testing the role of a range of variables on perception. Chapter 9, ‘The
gender marking effect in bilinguals ’, explores the effect of the gender-mark-
ing variable on perception, whereas chapter 9, ‘The role of guest-word
properties ’, tests the role of variables associated with phonotactics, inter-
language neighbour proximity, and language phonetics (concerning the
question of whether the guest word is pronounced in the guest language, i.e.
as a code-switch, or in the base language, i.e. as a borrowing). Findings show
that these are all important factors at various stages in processing. Finally,
chapter 11, ‘ The Léwy and Grosjean BIMOLA [Bilingual Model of Lexical
Access] Model ’, proposes a model of word recognition in bilinguals. This

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chapter is a slightly revised version of a paper by Léwy & Grosjean, which

has remained unpublished. The version published in the book has not been
adapted to the readership of the book, which we can assume to constitute
students who do not necessarily have a background in computational mod-
elling. As it stands, the chapter leaves the reader with more questions than
answers, and those without knowledge in computational modelling might
struggle to understand what is actually being proposed here. An overview of
the various existing models of bilingual word recognition and the problems
associated with them would have been a wiser choice to round off this part of
the book.
In part V, Grosjean directs his attention to the issue of deafness. In chapter
12, ‘The bicultural person : A short introduction ’, he outlines what it means
to be bicultural, arguing that one can be bilingual without being bicultural
and vice versa, and that individuals vary in the extent to which they identify
with one or more cultures. In chapter 13, ‘The bilingualism and biculturalism
of the Deaf ’, Grosjean discusses the similarities and differences between Deaf
or bimodular bilinguals and hearing bilinguals. Even though many simi-
larities exist, there are some interesting aspects that are specific to being a
Deaf bilingual, such as the fact that (i) there is little recognition of bilingual
status; (ii) Deaf bilinguals remain bilingual throughout their lives and often
from generation to generation ; (iii) Deaf bilinguals may have a deficit in
certain (i.e. oral) language skills ; and (iv) there are differences in language
mode (i.e. they will mostly be communicating with other Deaf bilinguals and
thus be more often at the bilingual end of the continuum). Grosjean also
outlines some differences between the biculturalism of the Deaf and that of
the hearing. Finally, he argues for the importance for Deaf children of being
able to grow up bilingual in sign language and oral language.
The final part of the book concludes with two chapters which argue
that conflicting results in different disciplines studying bilingualism (e.g.
psycholinguistics, language development, linguistics and neurolinguistics)
may in part be caused by methodological problems and that a proper dia-
logue between the various scholars might help advance the field. Chapter 14,
‘ Methodological and conceptual issues’, discusses a range of methodological
issues that are problematic, such as those pertaining to ‘bilingual partici-
pants, language mode, stimuli, and tasks as well as models of bilingual
presentation and processing ’ (240). Chapter 15, ‘Imaging bilinguals ’, dis-
cusses how to bridge the gap between neuroscientists and language scientists
on a number of such methodological issues.
On the whole, this is a well-structured and well-written book that should
appeal to those who want to get a good overview of Grosjean’s major con-
tributions to bilingualism research during the last twenty-five years. Many of
the fundamental issues tackled by Grosjean – in particular that of language
mode – have hugely influenced the field and as such cannot be ignored. The
book’s value lies in the fact that it gathers Grosjean’s contributions in a

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single volume in a sensible and logical fashion. What appears to be a missed

opportunity is that the information given is neither supplemented by more
up-to-date findings nor supported by wider data sets.

REFERENCES
Grosjean, François. 1982. Life with two languages: An introduction to bilingualism. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Grosjean, François & Joanne Miller. 1994. Going in and out of languages: An example of
bilingual flexibility. Psychological Science 5.4, 201–206.
Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, Barbara E. Bullock, Christopher G. Botero & Kristopher Allen
Davis. 2005. Perseverative phonetic effects in bilingual code-switching. In Randall S. Gess &
Edward J. Rubin (eds.), Theoretical and experimental approaches to Romance linguistics :
Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Salt Lake
City, March 2004, 291–306. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Author’s address: ESRC Centre for Research on Bilingualism, BangorUniversity,
College Road, Bangor, Gwynedd LL57 2DG, UK
i.mennen@bangor.ac.uk
(Received 11 April 2009)

J. Linguistics 45 (2009). doi:10.1017/S0022226709990090

f Cambridge University Press 2009

Mark Hale & Charles Reiss, The phonological enterprise. Oxford : Oxford
University Press, 2008. Pp. xii+292.

Reviewed by PAUL DE LACY, Rutgers University

In this book, Mark Hale & Charles Reiss (henceforth H&R) start by ex-
plaining what the ‘ phonological enterprise ’ is. For them, the enterprise is not
to account for speech sound patterns, but rather to develop a theory of a
physical object : the part(s) of the mind/brain devoted to the manipulation
of symbols that are ultimately converted by other mind/brain modules to
articulator movements that result in human speech. In short, H&R’s book
is about the phonological component (PhC), and reaffirms the tenets of
generative phonology.
H&R touch on many topics : the book provides a critique of phonological
methodology, sketches of a theory of learning and the PhC, and a critique of
Optimality Theory. However, the central issue is the ‘data [that] constitute
evidence for the nature of U[niversal] G[rammar], and how this data should
be used in theory construction ’ (2). The authors argue that work in gener-
ative phonology tends to assume explanations of speech sound patterns that
are based entirely in the PhC ; other modules and factors that could in fact be
responsible are often ignored. Following on from this point, H&R contend
that many universals and universal tendencies in sound patterns are in fact
due to extra-PhC modules and factors. H&R strongly argue that a PhC is
necessary, but because it is not needed to account for many sound patterns,
they propose that it is much more powerful than in most other generative

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