A few suggestions on broadening the cross-linguistic relevance of the Multilink model

Abstract

In their keynote article, Dijkstra, Wahl, Buytenhuijs, van Halem, Al-jibouri, De Korte & Rekke (2018) propose a new model that aims to integrate and take care of the possible shortcomings of both the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM, Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and Bilingual Interactive Activation model (BIA and several of its later versions, Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998). They begin their proposal by examining the objections/issues raised by Brysbaert and Duyck (2010) on RHM. It is well known that RHM is a developmental, production-based model which mostly predicted performance on translation-based tasks albeit with different predictions for translation recognition vs. production with regard to second language proficiency; BIA being a connectionist model of bilingual word recognition majorly emphasized on language non-selective selection and parallel language activation. Having been developed in and around Dutch (English as the second language), it took cognate status and orthographic similarity between words very seriously. Cognate status and orthographic similarity as factors won't count much as theoretical constructs around which a hypothesis could be developed if we look round the diverse types of orthographies and phonologies we find around the world.