Basic elements to consider in lexical access research with bilinguals and second-language learners

Abstract

This paper presents a critical overview of the characterization of bilinguals and lexical access for researchers in the field of language acquisition. The language acquisition and language use of bilinguals has been approached from different theoretical perspectives. These perspectives have described bilinguals’ cognitive processing of the words they know as different from that of monolinguals. Additionally, they assume that the context and the language use of a second-language learner are similar to that of bilinguals, and do not always consider these factors when defining these two types of language users. This paper provides a perspective on some basic elements that should be considered in the study of lexical access processing with bilinguals and second-language learners.