This study argues that Samuel Beckett's works in English and French reveal the organising energy of a "bilingual consciousness". Bilingualism is no personal eccentricity but the foundation for Beckett's mature art, without which it could not have developed. He has never been a unilingual writer; at every stage of his career his two languages have enriched, challenged and opposed each other. Bilingual art has allowed Beckett to move between linguistic circles, claiming as his own a transitional space that has protected his need for imaginative solitude. Gradually abandoning the cultural specificity of his early works in favour of archetypal settings that "translate" successfully to other contexts, he has focussed directly on what unites rather than divides human communities. Yet his writing retains an evident alertness to, and love of, the linguistic and cultural resources of English and French. His alternations between languages and his frequent activities as translator and self- translator contribute to a detachment from generic conventions that encourages innovation. Thus the often-criticised marginality of the bilingual has become for Beckett a source of strength. This analysis draws on a close reading of certain key texts, crossing languages freely to follow Beckett's own development. The prose has central place, because it spans his entire career, and because his most radical innovations have occurred in prose to be, subsequently, transferred in new forms to the drama. Chapter I presents Beckett's dual language-use in a wider context, exploring the early exposure afcd later suppression of "bilingual awareness, the implications of bilingualism for his artistic outlook, and the bilingual aesthetic he has developed. The remaining chapters draw on a new chronology of his writing and translating activities to show the development of his dual language-use and how it has interacted distinctively at each period with his artistic goals and practice.

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This study examined structural constraints on early child code mixing. Constraints are widely attested in adult bilinguals (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980). It has been argued that these constraints preserve the structural properties of both languages. It is uncertain whether constraints on early child code mixing are the same as constraints on adult code mixing. The present analysis was based on Poplack's two structural constraints: the free morpheme and the equivalence constraints. Ten French-English bilingual subjects were observed at 4 time periods, between approximately 2;00 and 3;06 years of age. The children's utterances containing elements from both languages were analysed for violations of Poplack's constraints. The violation rate was extremely low, less than 2% of the total mixed utterances. These results corroborate Lanza (1997), Vihman (1998), Allen et al. (2000), and Paradis et al. (2000), who likewise found that structural constraints on code mixing are operational from early in acquisition.

Recent evidence suggests that the task of managing a bilingual individual’s two languages is carried out by general attentional mechanisms. Researchers have found evidence for bilingual advantages in attention, specifically on tasks that involve inhibiting irrelevant information, which are believed to stem from lifelong practice at inhibiting the language system not currently in use. In the present study we hypothesized that, since bilinguals are better at inhibiting irrelevant information, they should show memory disadvantages if previously irrelevant information becomes relevant. 12 bilingual and 12 monolingual participants (age range:19-27) were tested in an eye tracking paradigm where the relational manipulation effect (the tendency to direct more viewing to manipulated regions of previously viewed scenes) was used to access memory for scenes that had been presented as distractors during a study block. No differences in memory were observed. However, we observed a significant difference in general viewing patterns between the two language groups, such that bilinguals made significantly shorter fixations.

In this study the role that language plays in the expression of intelligence, bilingualism, and the process of assessing selected cognitive abilities was explored. The primary purpose of the study was to determine if individuals who are allowed to move from one language to another when they provide responses to test items produce results that are different than those obtained by bilingual examinees assessed in one language only. The results indicate that the Experimental Group obtained significantly higher results than the Control Group on all the tests and subtests used. The Experimental Group code-switched more frequently and the examiners only code-switched with that group. The frequency of the code-switching behaviours explains, in great part, all the differences noted in the results as very few other sources of differences were identified, even when groups were compared on sex, first language and relative proficiency in French and in English.

Thesis (PhD) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2005. / Also held in print (xvi, 275 leaves, 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection. (T 306.4460830993 YU)

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 81-85) Also available in print.

Thesis PlanA (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M. A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Title proper from title frame. Also available in printed format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University. BLDSC no. DX211789.