A study of semantic and syntactic processing in monolinguals and fluent early bilinguals

The present study consists of two reaction-time experiments administered in English. These experiments were designed to compare semantic and syntactic processing in English monolinguals and fluent early French-English bilinguals. Results of both experiments revealed that the bilinguals did not function as the English monolinguals did. That is, their reaction times were slower and they made twice as many errors in response to certain sentences. These findings are especially important for two reasons: (1) The bilinguals were all highly fluent, and in most cases dominant, in English, and (2) the bilinguals exhibited systematic differences in two different linguistic components (the semantic and the syntactic). The results are viewed as evidence of the interdependence of the bilinguals' languages. Some note is made of individual patterns of response, and two interpretations of linguistic interdependence are provided.