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This thesis comprises three distinct sections. Firstly a literature review is presented which explores the available evidence of language changes in bilingual individuals with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The theoretical models presented are drawn from models based on healthy bilingual individuals, with hypotheses about how such models may be affected by AD. The quantitative papers are limited by being descriptive rather than theoretically driven, and the papers explored share similar methodological limitations in terms of being, and in terms of defining and selecting bilingual samples that share the key characteristics, and using suitable stimuli. The conclusions drawn are that both languages are affected by AD, with mixed tentative suggestions that the dominant language is more affected than the non dominant language, and that both languages are affected equally by. AD. The empirical study presents findings of an experimental study exploring verbal recall in Welsh/English bilingual older adults. A within subject analysis identified that bilingual individuals recalled significantly more Welsh words than English words. In addition, bilingual individuals mean recall for recall of English words on a standardised measure was not significantly different to the monolingual norms identified. Conclusions drawn were that in clinical practice English language norms are applicable to a Welsh/English bilingual population. In essence tentative recommendations can be made regards using established English language assessments with Welsh/English older adults but caution is required when generalizing across varied populations.

This thesis contains three studies. The first study examined the relationship between bilingualism/biscriptalism and working memory performance. Forty-two English monolingual and forty -five Chinese-English bili ngual adults participated in the research . Participants performed verbal shortterm, verbal working memory, visuospatial short-term, and visuo-spatial working memory tasks in their native language. Bilinguals also performed these tasks in their second language (L1). Results showed bilingual disadvantage in L1 verbal working memory. but bilingual advantage in visuo-spatial working memory regardless of language used. A robust relationship was found between L2 proficiency and verbal short-term and working memory in L2. LI proficiency predicted verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory performance in less LI dominant bilinguals. The second study assessed the involvement of working memory in numerical cognition. Participants performcd numerical magnitude and physical size judgement tasks under no suppression, visuo-spatial suppression, or verbal suppression, with horizontal or vertical presentation, in neutral, congruent or incongruent conditions. The third study assessed the role of working memory in simple multiplication and subtraction. Participants performed multiplication and subtraction tasks under no suppression, visuo-spatial suppression, or verbal suppression, with horizontal or veltical presentation, in congruent or incongruent conditions. Results from both second and third studies revealed tbat bilinguals generally performed faster than monolinguals in the tasks. Also in both studies. further analysis showed accuracy to be a better determinant of performance difference between bilinguals and monolinguals. Performance differed between the language groups within the suppression and congruency levels in the multiplication task. Correlational analyses showed a relationship between bilinguals L2 verbal working memory performance in numerical magnitude. physical size, and multiplication processing. In addition, bilinguals' LI verbal working memory and L2 vi suo-spatial working memory were involved in physical size and multiplication processing. Results were discussed as to the underlying mechanism shared between working memory and accuracy processes in the numerical and arithmetical tasks.

This thesis is about how words and (word-)forms from German and English interact with each other and with same-language elements. That is, it is a comparison of the syntax of bilingual speakers' monolingual and intra-sententially code-switched utterances. It is based on the assumption that each word in a syntactic dependency relation must satisfy the constraints imposed on it by its own language. This hypothesis is presumed to hold for monolingual and mixed dependencies alike.

This study employs a cognitive linguistics approach, conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) to investigate bilingual conceptual representation. The study analyses the metaphorical and metonymic expressions commonly used among Akan-English bilinguals in Ghana to talk about different aspects of two basic emotion concepts (ANGER and FEAR) when they speak English. On the one hand, findings from psycholinguistic research on the nature of the bilingual mental lexicon appear somehow inconclusive. On the other hand, cognitive linguistics research on human mental representation tends to focus on evidence from native/monolingual populations. Consequently, this study combines methods from the two related fields of research to explore the nature of the bilingual conceptual representation. In other words, the study analyses bilingual figurative language in order to test two psycholinguistics claims about bilingual conceptual representation. In order to do this, the study includes a cross-linguistic/cross-cultural analysis of the conceptualisation of ANGER and FEAR in Akan and English. A combined method of elicitation and native speaker's intuition was used to collect conventional metaphorical expressions of ANGER and FEAR (in English) among Akan-English bilinguals in Ghana. Conceptual metaphors that are believed to underlie these metaphorical expressions were then inferred for analysis. The bilingual metaphors (both linguistic and conceptual) were analysed in the light of conventional metaphors (linguistic and conceptual) of the two concepts among native/monolingual speakers of each of the bilinguals' two languages, Akan and English. Findings from this study show further support for the shared storage hypothesis. The findings also confirm the assertion that the bilingual's conceptual structure is not a simple addition of the cognitive processes associated with each of his/her languages (Kroll and De Groot 1997) but rather a product of a complex interaction between the two or more languages of the bilingual in intricate ways - what Pavlenko (2009) has called “a conceptual restructuring”.

Lexical selection is the process whereby semantic concepts activate and ultimately select a word to be produced in speech. This thesis examined the similarities of bilingual and monolingual lexical selection in naming. Chapter 2 reports three experiments that examined lexical facilitation in the picture-word task. Similar results were found for bilinguals and monolinguals. When bilinguals named in Ll, and monolinguals produced common names, identical distractors (PERRO+perro, DOG+dog) produced facilitation, whereas translations (PERRO+dog) and synonyms (DOG+hound) had no effect. However, when bilinguals named in L2, and monolinguals produced less common synonym names, identical distractors (DOG+dog, HOUND+hound) as well as translations (DOG+perro), and synonyms (HOUND+dog), produced facilitation. Synonyms in monolinguals simulated the effects from translations in bilinguals. Chapter 3 reports four experiments that investigated the role of orthography in the picture-word task in Japanese (and an attempt to simulate this in English using pseudohomophones). The phonological Japanese script Hiragana snowed larger effects than the morphological script Kanji or the alphabetic script Romaji. Chapter 4 reports four experiments that investigated the semantic distance between distractors and targets in the picture- word Stroop tasks. There were no effects from synonyms of target names, and larger interference from more closely than distantly related distractors. Finally, Chapter 5 reports a series of experiments investigating lexical selection using the picture-picture task, which produced disappointing results. The thesis concludes that there are cornmonalities in monolingual and bilingual lexical selection.

This thesis addresses a central issue within the field of Bilingual First Language Acquisition (BFLA) by exploring the extent to which the two languages can affect each other during development. The aim of this work is twofold. Firstly, it proposes a particular formalisation of the acquisition process which is based on a set of assumptions that are mostly drawn from standard linguistic theory. It then argues for a theory of the acquisition of lexical properties that is based on the interaction between two higher level systems. The first of these is a system dedicated to organising the developing lexicon into paradigms while the second is an informationally monotonic updating system whose role is to add newly acquired lexical information to those items that are not yet fully developed. It is then argued that this model can accommodate transfer effects as an inevitable consequence of BFLA. Given that the lexicon of a bilingual child is larger than that of monolinguals, the updating mechanism has a wider field of application and therefore---besides over-generalisation---transfer effects will also obtain. An important consequence of this claim is that the only difference between a monolingual and a bilingual child lies in the domain within which the updating mechanism applies. The fact that language production in bilingual children differs from that of monolinguals does not force the postulation of special bilingual strategies but can be accounted for by appealing to the very two aspects that monolinguals and bilinguals do not have in common, namely the input and the number of developing lexical sets. A substantial part of the thesis is dedicated to evaluating the empirical coverage of this model. This involves discussion of data from case-studies as well as experimental work both old and new.

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