# Bilingual Language Control in Phonological Encoding: Evidence from Chinese–English Bilinguals

## TL;DR

This study shows how bilinguals manage language control during speech, finding that both languages are activated but only the target language is selected.

## Contribution

The study provides evidence for the Language-Specific Selection Model in bilingual phonological encoding.

## Key findings

- Phonological judgment performance is enhanced by prior naming in either language.
- Cross-language phonological facilitation occurs in both L1 and L2 production.
- Domain-general control only affects L2 tasks, supporting language-specific selection.

## Abstract

This study explored language control in phonological encoding during L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English) production via two retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) experiments and two bilingual picture–word interference (PWI) experiments with Chinese–English bilinguals. RIF results showed that performance on a target language phonological judgement task can be facilitated by prior picture naming in either the target language or a non-target language in both L2 and L1 production. Bilingual PWI results revealed cross-language phonological facilitation effects in L2 and L1 production. Domain-general cognitive control only moderated effects in L2 tasks. Findings confirmed non-selective phonological activation of translation equivalents and cross-language phonologically related words and supported the Language-Specific Selection Model as the primary language control mechanism in phonological encoding, which restricts competition to the target language.