This paper addresses the question of whether or not natural code switching talk takes an observable amount of time (in comparison with unilingual speech), as has been suggested by a good deal of experimental research on bilingual language processing. Some of the major studies on this topic are discussed and their results compared with the switching times determined for a Spanish-English bilingual in spontaneous code switching. Implications of the findings are also discussed in relation to a number of issues in research on bilingualism.
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