By taking typological and processing approaches to studying multilingualism, Filipović and Pütz present an important and timely set of peer-reviewed papers selected from The 35th International LAUD Symposium. The result is an array of 12 high-quality contributions plus an introductory chapter by the editors that serves to foreshadow and contextualize the main themes of the book. The 12 studies are divided across two parts and are dedicated to exploring either typological (Part 1) or processing (Part 2) perspectives of multilingual language use.

Part 1 consists of seven contributions. The first offers an overview of methodological advances in linguistic relativity research. Lucy outlines discussions that identify key methodological challenges along with insightful ways of addressing and overcoming them. The second, a study by Calude and Pagel, uses corpora from 18 languages to investigate the use of basic vocabulary items across different languages and language families. The results of their analyses provide support for the notion that there is a collection of universal and fundamental meanings that people from all languages and parts of the world use with predictable regularity regardless of other external factors. De Knop compares and contrasts the use of color terms in French and German causal constructions (e.g., I am green with envy or He is red with rage). The study uncovers interesting differences in the frequency, meaning, and perception of color terms between French and German. Research reported by Bagasheva takes a Whorfian approach to studying the relativity debate by focusing on compound verbs in English and Bulgarian. The results suggest that linguistic labeling may affect the cognitive routines of speakers, which the author interprets as evidence for a causal role for language in the culture-cognition-language interface. The fifth study (Gladkova) presents an investigation of the differences and similarities of spatial distances in English and Russian. Crosslinguistic semantic analyses on terms such as here, near, not far, and far provide support for both language-specific and potentially universal semantic parameters. Thiering takes a unique approach to exploring cognitive maps of landmark orientation by analyzing linguistic and cultural anthropological information. The comparative analyses between the Eipo and Dene languages show that spatial categorization is determined by cultural heritage and environmental landmarks. Finally, Sinha questions and criticizes the universality of space-time mapping. He argues for a culture-mediated account of space-time metaphorical mapping.

In the first of five contributions in Part 2, Filipović reviews a variety of factors such as bilingual processing and memory retrieval and explains bilingual behavior through the efficiency argument, which stipulates that interactions among these factors are underpinned by the drive for communicative efficiency. De Groot focuses on production and comprehension differences of “bilingual accents” at the level of phonetics, syntax, and semantics. She argues that nonnativelike deviations may arise due to a combination of the qualitatively distinct bilingual memory representations and the parallel activation of linguistic elements. The third study by Houtzager, Lowie, and de Bot looks at aging effects on verbal and nonverbal cognitive performance. Their study revealed significant differences for middle-aged and elderly Dutch-Frisian bilinguals on task switching, working memory, and verbal fluency abilities. Interestingly, higher degrees of balance between the two languages were related to smaller task switching costs. Xia and Leung explore the effects of first-language prototypicality on second-language vocabulary learning among English learners of Chinese. The results are interpreted as support for a unitary conceptual system shared by both languages. Finally, the fifth contribution by Onysko and Degani investigates the interpretation of novel English compounds among Māori-English bilinguals. The authors argue for evidence of structural transfer when bilinguals are in monolingual situations and for the notion that two languages are always activated in the bilingual mind.

Perhaps the strongest quality of the volume is that it presents a new and exciting intersection of research in cognitive multilingualism where a range of perspectives come together to explore a wide range of languages, even those that are not commonly studied (e.g., Amondawa, Dene, & Yukatek, among others). The contributors critically discuss theoretical and methodological considerations that are sure to inform and enhance future work in multilingualism and processing, linguistic diversity, and language typology. In all, the Filipović and Pütz volume is a highly recommended resource for anyone interested in bilingualism and multilingualism.