Neurolinguistics: how a bilingual brain learns words

Abstract

Second language word learning is an extremely complex and fascinating mental process that can help us to understand how our brain incorporates new words into its lexicon. In general, neurolinguistics seeks to reveal the mental processes associated with learning and processing of a linguistic stimulus. One of the fundamental issues addressed in bilingual studies, under the neurolinguistic approach, is to determine how the bilingual brain stores and retrieves information related to words in each of its two languages. Specifically, how do we activate word meaning in both languages? Or how does our brain take a word and divide it (or not) into its different orthographic components? In this article we review the main findings regarding these questions as well as evidence of how the bilingual brain represents and organizes words in each of its two languages. Finally, we discuss some implications for the educational field.

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