The synthesis model: beyond feature matching restrictions

What is it about?

In this commentary we would like to argue that constraints that go beyond the minimum requirements of MP and DM may shape the language choices made by unimodal bilinguals and that this could also be the case for bimodal bilinguals. To this end, we will discuss data from simultaneous and subsequent unimodal bilinguals, to illustrate whether and how patterns of directionality in cross-linguistic influence and code-switching can be predicted. We discuss a construct, “lexical transparency”, and a hypothesis, the “Grammatical Features Spell-Out Hypothesis” (GFSH), first to illustrate, using oral data from unimodal bilinguals, how the directionality of cross-linguistic influence and code-switching patterns can be predicted and/or accounted for, and then to discuss whether and how both “lexical transparency” and the GFSH would be accommodated to bimodal bilingualism within the Synthesis Model.

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