Psycholinguistics is the study of how humans acquire, use, comprehend, and produce language, including in individuals who know more than one language. Researchers try to develop models to describe and predict specific linguistic behaviors of bilingual speakers. Factors that must be considered include incomplete second language knowledge, greater hesitancy and errors in the second language, and traces of the first language. Proposals have been made about how bilinguals keep their languages separate, such as storing words from each language in separate subsets. Language choice is influenced not just by semantics but also by which language matches the preverbal message. Experimental studies have measured response times to images to study language production and infer relative proficiency between a bilingual's first and second

1. Psycholinguistics

2. What is Psycholinguistics?
Is the study of psychological factors that enable
human to acquire, use, comprehend and
produce language.
Psycholinguists have recognized the importance
of extending the study of language processing
to individuals who are acquiring or actively
using the study of language processing to
individuals who are acquiring or actively using
more that one language.

3. Modeling Language Production of the
Competent Bilingual
Researchers try to develop models to describe
and preferably predict specific linguistic
behavior. The aim is to capture all aspects of
language use. Level's ‘speaking’ model
development of communicative intentions to
the articulation of the sounds.

4. Poulisse (1997) mentions the following factors
that have to be taken into account if we want
to turn a monolingual model into a bilingual
model:
o Second language knowledge is typical
incomplete
o Second language is more hesitant and
contains more errors
o Second language often carries traces of the
first language

5. Keeping Languages Apart
Psycholinguistically, a number of proposals have
been made on how bilingual speakers keep
their languages apart.
According to Paradis (1981), words from a given
language from a sub-set of the total inventory.

6. Language Choice
Language is one of the features used in the
selection process. So, for the selecton of the
lemma ‘boy’, not only do the semantic
features ‘male’ and ‘young’ have to match
relevant conceptual information in the
preverbal message for a bilingual speaker.

7. Experimental Studies of Language
Production in first language and
second language
Recent studies have used a set of experimental
tasks to constrain the words that speakers
produce in order to investigate the planning of
utterances in real time. By measuring the time
to begin to speak the picture’s name in first
language and second language its possible to
infer the bilingual’s relative proficiency in the
two languages.

8. The Non-selective Nature of Lexical
Access
The topic of selectivity of lexical access
mentioned above in the discussion of
language production research is also a key
issue in understanding how knowledge of the
bilingual’s two languages is organized and
accessed in particular for understanding the
role of the fist language during second
language acquisition.

9. Developing Lexical Proficiency in a
second language
Relatively few studies have taken a
developmental approach to this approach to
this issue to ask how the nature of activated
lexical information changes with increasing
proficiency in second language.
Most recent research has considered the
implication of this developmental course is
the early reliance on first language.

10. Implications
Probably the one main placation of this, largely
theoretical chapter is that for both language
production and language perception two
factors determine accessibility of linguistic
elements in particular in non-balanced
bilinguals and language learners.
Psycholinguistic insights also can inform some of
the discussions and controversies on bilingual
education and bilingual upbringing.