ONLINE SENTENCE INTERPRETATION IN SPANISH-ENGLISH BILINGUALS - WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE IN BETWEEN

The present study investigates the real-time costs of sentence process ing in early Spanish-English bilinguals. Our results indicate that bil inguals use an amalgam (a combination of L1 and L2 strategies) of mono lingual strategies in choosing the agent of a setence. The reaction ti me (RT) data, however, reveal a slightly larger language specific comp onent than the choice data. That is, biliguals appear to fall more ''i n between'' the two monolingual groups in their choice profiles than i n their RT profiles. This implies that early bilinguals may be paying a language-specific processing cost in order to maintain an ''in betwe en'' profile. The nature of the bilingual/monolingual dichotomy and it s implications for the study of bilingual language processing are disc ussed.