Barbara Köpke

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

During oral interaction, bilingual speakers can maintain the language which they intend to use or switch to a second one if required by the situation. These actions are made possible with the support of a control mechanism, which enables the selection of a target language while inhibiting the non target language. Behavioural research over the past...

There is a large body of research on discourse production in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Some studies have focused on pause production, revealing that patients make extensive use of pauses during speech. This has been attributed to lexical retrieval difficulties, but pausing may also reflect other forms of cognitive impairment as it increases with co...

The issue of cross-language transfer (CLT) in aphasia therapy with bilingual patients is controversial and the conditions determining if there is transfer or not are not yet clear. A higher number of representations and processes shared by the two languages seem to increase transfer. We challenged this hypothesis through a treatment study focusing...

This study delves into the concept of Harmonious Bilingual Development (HBD), characterizing families where linguistic situations do not adversely affect their well-being. Following a recently proposed holistic framework on Harmonious Bilingual Experience (HBE), this research aims to discern the relationship between input factors and the bilingual...

This paper is based on a study of first language attrition in Czechs living in France, which reveals that Czech expatriates in France use prominent rises in non-conclusive intonation patterns in their native language. We manipulated the speech of six expatriates by reducing the fundamental frequency (f0) range of non-conclusive rises in a phrase, a...

Le recours à un IPS vise à pallier les difficultés rencontrées lors d’un bilan de langage d’un enfant bilingue, mais reste une pratique méconnue des orthophonistes français. Notre étude explore l’implémentation d’un IPS dans ce type d’évaluation. Nous avons effectué une analyse qualitative par analyse thématique d’entretiens et observations durant...

Les enfants bilingues représentent une proportion non négligeable de la population dans la plupart des pays européens, mais leurs spécificités sont encore très mal connues. Qu’il s’agisse de bilingues précoces issus de l’immigration ou exposés à des langues régionales, une des particularités réside dans l’existence de variations d’ordre individuell...

Age of acquisition and proficiency have been identified as possible determinants in the neural localization of second language representation and in the nature of control mechanisms. However, the relationship is not yet clear between age of acquisition and proficiency on the one hand, and language switching and executive functions on the other. In...

While it has long been assumed that brain plasticity declines significantly with growing maturity, recent studies in adult subjects show grey and white matter changes due to language learning that suggest high adaptability of brain structures even within short time-scales. It is not known yet whether other language development phenomena, such as at...

How do production and comprehension processes interact in the bilingual brain during language interaction? Most experimental and theoretical research in psycholinguistics to date has focused on investigating the mechanisms that underlie language production and language comprehension separately. Only recently have researchers started emphasizing the...

This study examines the perception of L1 speech of 14 late Czech-French bilinguals who have been living in France for at least two months by Czech monolinguals. We wanted to know whether native speakers judge the L1 production of late Czech-French bilinguals differently from the L1 production of Czech monolingual. The perceptual experiment involved...

This study examines phonetic attrition of the first language (L1) affected by second language (L2) in Czech speakers living in Toulouse (late Czech-French bilinguals – CF). We compared the production of vowels by 13 CF and 13 Czech monolinguals living in the Central Bohemian Region (C). CF had been living in France for at least one year and started...

Research suggests that bilingual language control and executive control (EC) have similar mechanisms and share common brain networks. Managing two languages presumably reinforces these networks and enhances the level of general executive functioning in bilinguals. Despite a huge amount of research, there is not yet any consensus on the nature of th...

We sought to describe the strategies used by 2L1 and L2 Basque-French bilingual children and monolingual Basque children to express subject-agent function in a free elicitation context in Basque. Based on a three-year longitudinal study, the analysis focused on transitive constructions requiring a subject-agent noun marked for ergative case. The re...

This paper focuses on the interactions between the languages in the multilingual mind with reference to studies on cross-linguistic influence, dominance shift and, particularly, language attrition. We first address first language attrition by providing a brief state of the art with respect to three main questions: why does attrition arise, how does...

We explore the relationship between first language attrition and language dominance, defined here as the relative availability of each of a bilingual’s languages with respect to language processing. We assume that both processes might represent two stages of one and the same phenomenon (Schmid and Köpke, 2017; Köpke, 2018). While many researchers a...

Research on second language acquisition and bilingual development strongly suggests that when a previously monolingual speaker becomes multilingual, the different languages do not exist in isolation: they are closely linked, dependent on each other, and there is constant interaction between these different knowledge systems. Theoretical frameworks...

This volume is both a state-of-the-art display of current thinking on second language development as a complex system. It is also a tribute to Diane Larsen-Freeman for her decades of intellectual leadership in the academic disciplines of applied linguistics and second language acquisition. The chapters therein range from theoretical expositions to...

The Screening BAT, currently available in ten languages, is a simple and user-friendly test developed to allow for an efficient assessment of multilingual patients and to be used with patients who are in the acute phase of aphasia. It consists in an important reduction of the sub-tests (17 ou f 32) and items (117 out of 472) of the Bilingual Aphasi...

Research on the mutual relationships between brain and language and, particularly, language disorders following brain lesions has required contributions from the fields of linguistics, psychology and neurobiological sciences. The development of neuropsycholinguistic approaches to the study of the relationship between language, cognition and the bra...

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study of seven Basque-French bilingual children and three monolingual Basque-speaking children concerning the acquisition of the morphological marking of the ergative case in Basque. Following the hypotheses put forth to account for the development of early bilingualism, the aim of the study was to...

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study of seven Basque-French bilingual children and three monolingual Basque-speaking children concerning the acquisition of the morphological marking of the ergative case in Basque. Following the hypotheses put forth to account for the development of early bilingualism, the aim of the study was to...

The present paper will present an overview of the state of the art in language attrition research, attempting to provide an integrated picture of the attrition process in the light of Dynamic Systems Theory. Recent findings suggest that a fully developed L1 system is a powerful attractor state, as defined by Dynamic Systems Theory. Once this state...

Many bilinguals are in reality multilinguals: it is nowadays more and more common to encounter aphasic patients using three or four languages in daily life for communication with their environment. Assessment of each of their languages remains essential for the establishment of the best rehabilitation strategies. However, assessment of two, three o...

Bilinguals and multilinguals are a population characterized by huge variability both at the level of external factors determining the type of bilingualism and with respect to their linguistic and psycholinguistic competence. Additionally, their competence in the different languages changes over the life-span depending on language use, which renders...

In this paper, we report a case study of a 31-year-old multilingual female (LK) who presented with a left prefrontal brain tumour (WHO grade II glioma). LK is a late trilingual person whose first language is German. She had been learning English and French for 10 years when she moved to France at the age of 20 and now mostly uses French. German (L1...

It is commonly assumed that simultaneous interpreting is very demanding with respect to cognitive resources such as working memory (WM). Previous studies measuring WM skills in simultaneous interpreters, however, have yielded contradictory findings. Some studies seem to support the hypothesis of enhanced WM skills in professional interpreters, othe...

This contribution presents an overview of current issues in language attrition research. The first section is concerned with terminological issues and the importance of distinguishing the phenomenon of attrition, which affects individual speakers, from societal processes of change, such as language shift and death. We then turn to the question of a...

This volume consists of a collection of papers that focus on structural/grammatical aspects of the process of first language attrition. It presents an overview of current research, methodological issues and important questions regarding first language attrition. In particular, it addresses the two most prominent issues in current L1 attrition resea...

We have translated the most famous text of Sigmund Exner (1846-1926), which relates to the existence of a localised "writing centre" in the brain. We discuss its relevance to modern studies and understanding of writing and agraphia. In Exner's most famous text, he hypothesised about the eponymous "Exner's Area", a discrete area within the brain tha...

Notre poster présente le bilan d’une étude-pilote menée en Pays Basque de France auprès d’enfants bilingues basco-français. Ce travail a consisté à recueillir et à comparer la production orale en français et en basque de quatre profils de bilingues précoces. Les résultats préliminaires sur l’acquisition du marqueur de l’ergatif en basque remettent...

Research on the bilingual mental lexicon has progressed considerably over the past 25 years. Two questions have received particular attention in this respect, namely organisational principles of a bilingual lexicon on the one hand and chronometrical aspects of on-line access in bilinguals on the other. A third important point that has been largely...

This chapter is an attempt to survey the predictions of some of the most important factors involved in attrition and to discuss them with respect to empirical data from L1 attrition. The factors discussed include biological aspects (plasticity, activation thresholds, inhibition and emotional implication), cognitive aspects (memory, aptitude, litera...

This collection of articles provides theoretical foundations and perspectives for language attrition research. Its purpose is to enable investigations of L1 attrition to avail themselves more fully and more fundamentally of the theoretical frameworkes that have been formulated with respect to SLA and bilingualism.

Simultaneous interpreting is generally assumed to be particularly demanding with respect to cognitive resources such as attention and working memory, which are thought to gradually increase with professional practice. Experimental data to corroborate this assumption is still rather sparse, however. Here we report an in-depth investigation of workin...

The study of L1 attrition is currently entering its third decade. However, after twenty years of diligent investigation resulting in numerous theoretical and empirical papers the questions on this topic still greatly outweigh the answers. Findings from individual studies seem to indicate that it cannot even be said with any certainty whether an L1...

This volume provides a state-of-the-art treatment of research on language attrition, the non-pathological loss of a language through lack of exposure. It combines a review of past and present research with in-depth treatment of specific theoretical and methodological issues and reports on individual studies. Special prominence is given to the ident...

The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with a general overview of the field of attrition. Having situated this relatively new research domain with respect to related fields and approaches, a brief summary of the most important research questions and preliminary findings is given. The discussion then focuses on two issues that are of particu...

Since the beginnings of language attrition research in the eighties, several distinctions have been proposed in order to delimit the field of attrition with respect to other language contact phenomena. One of the most important distinctions is certainly the one proposed by de Bot (1998) permitting to define attrition as individual language loss inv...

This article reports on some data of a psycholinguistic study of first language attrition in german first generation immigrants. On the basis of the individual variation in performance evidenced by the data, I claim that L1 attrition in late bilinguals is not only the consequence of lack of L1 use. A comparison of the performance of three selected...