Aspects of bilingual
lexical processing
M.W. Lee (1997)
This dissertation
presents an experimental psycholinguistic study of two issues in bilingual
lexical processing: spoken word production in a selected language and
organisation of bilingual lexical memory. The first chapter gives a description
of the bilinguals on whom the experimental work reported in this dissertation
was carried out, and explains how the two bilingual issues investigated in this
dissertation relate to ongoing work on lexical processing by monolinguals.
Chapter 2
addresses the question of whether words of the unwanted language are activated
at all in the lexical selection process during bilinguals' spoken word
production in a selected language. Many lines of work in cognitive psychology
and applied linguistics can be seen as having some relevance to the question
and they are critically reviewed. An experimental study of picture naming by
bilinguals is presented, the results of which suggest that, during word
production in a selected language, cross-language lexical competition takes
place, but there is also a selected language bias which makes within-language
lexical competition stronger than cross-language competition.
Chapter 3 is
concerned with the system of lexical mappings that underlies bilinguals'
lexical knowledge. A survey is provided of the experimental work that descends
from Weinreich's descriptive typology of the co-ordinative, compound and
sub-ordinative types of bilingual lexical organisation. Four experiments are
reported: The first experiment indicates that the bilingual subjects tested
used direct lexical links to perform L2-to-L1 word translating; the remaining
experiments capitalise on this finding and produce results which suggest that
cross-language direct lexical links should be located at an intermediate level
between concept and word-form and which therefore challenge the traditional
assumption of only a conceptual and a word-form level of representation in
bilingual lexical memory.
The two questions
addressed in Chapters 2 and 3 have in the past been looked at under various
guises. The originality of the current approach lies in the attempt explicitly
to relate questions about bilinguals to recent developments in
(monolingual-centred) experimental psycholinguistics. The final chapter further
argues for the theoretical significance of work on bilingualism by way of a
discussion of the implications that the work reported in this dissertation may
have for selected basic issues in cognitive science.
Mutual exclusivity and bilingual
lexical acquisition
Kathleen McClure (1998)
According to the
mutual exclusivity (ME) assumption, children assume that each object has only
one label. It is claimed that ME helps guide children's initial hypotheses
about the meanings of new words, thus helping to explain why children acquire
words as rapidly as they do. Characterised as a default assumption, ME is a
first guess on the probable meaning of a new word, but it can be overridden.
Evidence that it has been overridden is the presence of dual labels. Bilingual
data are particularly useful because they have the potential to present
numerous cross-language equivalents, which ME predicts young bilinguals should
avoid for the first 50 to 150 words.
This study tested
the ME hypothesis using both naturalistic and experimental data from children
at the one-word stage acquiring two languages from birth. The study comprised a
case study and an experimental study. The case study investigated the extent
that ME was overridden in one child by investigating the number of dual labels
found. A child acquiring English and Italian was observed from the time he
could produce a few words (1;3.1) to just beyond his second birthday (2;0.19).
Data were collected in the form of a parental diary record of the words he
understood and produced and weekly videotaped sessions of him interacting with
his Italian-speaking mother and English-speaking father. The experimental study
tested the hypothesis that children can learn second labels for objects by
teaching six infant bilinguals first one word in one of their languages and
then the equivalent label in the other language.
The findings
contribute to the debate on whether ME is available to children under 2 1/2
years old by showing that ME was overridden to such an extent in the case study
as to question its usefulness as a word-learning principle. Furthermore, the
children in the experimental study, contrary to ME"s prediction, were able
to learn second labels for objects. The findings also contribute to the debate
on the place of word-learning principles in lexical acquisition by offering an
alternative view of how children may learn words.
Processing Embedding in Humans and
Connectionist Models
Ngoni Chipere (1999)
The aim of the
research was to determine whether individual differences in the ability to
comprehend certain multiply embedded syntactic structures arise from individual
differences in memory capacity or from individual differences in syntactic
competence. This question was addressed through a literature review and three
experimental studies. Data from the experiments was then used to assess
selected Classical and Connectionist models of syntactic embedding. The
literature review indicates that there is insufficient evidence to decide
between the two explanations of individual differences in comprehension. The
experiments addressed the research question by: a) testing subjects other than
the customary university students; b) using structures other than the usual
relative clause structures and c) testing subjects before and after they had
been provided with memory and comprehension training. In Experiment 1, graduate
native, graduate non-native and non-graduate native speakers of English were
tested on complex NP, Tough Movement and Parasitic gap structures (e.g. in
order, ‘Tom knows that the fact that stealing clothes openly is stupid amuses
the boy’; ‘The bank manager will be difficult to get the convict to give a loan
to’ and ‘The man who Peter saw after overhearing his girlfriend planning to
jilt took the 11 o’clock train’). The non-native graduates obtained the highest
comprehension scores, followed by the native graduates. This result was
explained in terms of effects of education on comprehension, whereby the
explicit grammatical instruction given to graduate non-natives while learning
English gave them an advantage over the native speakers. In Experiment 2, post
GCSE students of high and low academic ability were tested on comprehension and
recall of complex NP sentences (example given above). High academic ability
students obtained higher scores in comprehension and recall whereas low
academic ability students obtained poor recall scores and generally failed to
comprehend the sentences. The low academic ability students were then given
memory training. Despite achieving high levels of sentence retention, they
still could not comprehend the sentences. Comprehension improved only after
comprehension training. It was concluded that the initial failure to comprehend
the sentences arose from insufficient syntactic competence, rather than
insufficient memory capacity. In Experiment 2, a similar low academic ability
group was given comprehension training only. Subsequently, they understood and
recalled the test sentences as well as the high academic ability students. It
was concluded that the initial failure to recall the sentences was a result of
poor comprehension. Classical and Connectionist models of sentence processing
were then considered. Classical models assume that language users have a
generative grammar which is constrained by a limited working memory capacity.
Connectionist models assume that language users induce linguistic structure
from experience and comprehend novel sentences through a process of constraint
satisfaction. The ability of these two types of model to explain the results
was then evaluated. The purpose of this evaluation was to produce a
theoretically satisfactory explanation of individual differences in the ability
to comprehend complex structures. Such an explanation has consequences for the
teaching of language to both native and non-natives speakers. In the
Conclusion, general implications of the findings for sentence processing models
and for native language teaching were considered.
The involvement of working memory
in reading in a foreign language
Catherine Walter (2000)
The L2 threshold
effect. In the area of second-language (L2) reading, the L2 reading threshold
effect is a well-documented phenomenon: L2 learners who are skilled
comprehenders in their first language do not transfer their L1 reading
comprehension skills to L2 until they reach a certain level of L2 proficiency
(Alderson 1984, Clarke 1988, Markham 1985, Bossers 1991, Carrell 1991,
Bernhardt and Kamil 1995). Even though this effect has been amply attested,
English language course books continue to contain, and teaching methodology
manuals continue to encourage, work on reading comprehension skills at lower
intermediate levels (Harmer 1991, pp. 184-211; Nunan 1991, pp. 63-82; McDonough
and Shaw 1993, pp. 101-125). Language classroom time is spent working
explicitly on reading comprehension skills which many or most learners already
possess in L1, and which they will transfer to L2 unproblematically once they
have crossed the L2 reading threshold.
The present
research had two main aims. The first was to examine the L2 reading threshold
more closely. Previous studies had looked at learners' reading comprehension
performance in L2 without reference to their reading comprehension performance
in L1. In the present series of experiments, each task was performed both in L1
(French) and in L2 (English) by two groups of learners: one at a
lower-intermediate L2 proficiency level and the other at an upper-intermediate
level. Another lacuna in previous studies had to do with the locus of the
reading threshold effect: it was not clear what was failing to be transferred
from L1. The present research tested the hypothesis that it is the building of
mental representations of text that fails to be transferred in the L2 reading
threshold effect.
Working memory.
The second main aim of the present research was to test the hypothesis that the
reading threshold effect is linked to the development of L2 working memory
(WM), and to examine the possibility that this might be due in part to
inadequate L2 phonological representations. As in the reading comprehension
experiments, all WM and phonological short-term memory tasks in the present
series were performed both in L1 and in L2. L1-only studies have shown that
low-WM individuals have difficulties in comprehension, and that these
difficulties are linked to the unreliability of their mental representations
(Yuill and Oakhill 1991; Swanson and Berninger 1995; Cornoldi, De Beni and
Pazzaglia 1996); and the reading performance of advanced L2 learners has been
shown to correlate with WM (Harrington 1992; Harrington and Sawyer 1992). If L2
learners with adequate L1 comprehension skills who do not transfer these skills
to L2 also have much lower WM in L2 than in L1, and if this differentiates them
from learners who do transfer their reading comprehension skills to L2, this
suggests a link between WM and the threshold effect.
Cross-disciplinary
focus. The present research includes elements of both cognitive psychology and
second language acquisition. Therefore, rather than begin with an exhaustive
literature review of the different fields to be covered, this dissertation is
divided into two parts, each part comprising three experiments:
- Part
1: Working memory and phonological short-term memory in L1 and L2
- Part
2: The L2 reading threshold and working memory
Each part begins
a general background to the field in question, and each experiment carries its
own introduction with a review of the relevant literature. As has been
indicated, the L2 reading threshold was the starting point for this research;
however, the working memory experiments are reported first, so that the working
memory implications of each reading comprehension experiment can be explored as
the results are reported.
Bimodal input, word recognition,
and memory
Stephen Bird (2000)
This dissertation
explored some possible effects of ‘same-language’ subtitled film/video as a
foreign language learning tool. A number of studies have shown that
same-language subtitling can be beneficial to language learners in terms of
overall plot comprehension and word meaning. However, critics argue that
same-language subtitling distracts students from the auditory channel, creates
a dependency on text, and adversely affects spoken word form learning. In the
present dissertation, experiments were designed to measure the effects of
single modality and bimodal inputs (text with sound) on spoken word recognition
and memory. Six experiments are reported. Subjects first performed training
tasks that included target words and/or nonwords in various modalities
(sound-only, text-only, and sound with text). Subjects were then given implicit
and explicit memory tests. The overall results were the following (1) On the
implicit tests, the repetition priming effects for reaction times to words were
equivalent in single modality and bimodal conditions; (2) Nonword reaction time
priming was absent in all conditions for all experiments except one, which
revealed priming for the text-only and bimodal conditions when targets were
repeated three times prior to test and subjects were required by the training
task to convert print to phonological information; (3) On two experiments’
implicit tests, the bimodal condition showed reduced errors for words and
nonwords (4) On explicit tests, the bimodal condition showed significantly
higher scores than the two other presentation conditions for words and
nonwords. Overall, the results suggest that simultaneous bimodal inputs can
improve some implicit and explicit aspects of spoken word form learning without
any apparent costs. The results are discussed in terms of implications for
same-language subtitling, and models of word recognition and memory.
Kerrie Elston-Güttler (2000)
This dissertation
presents an experimental psycholinguistic study on L2 lexical processing with
the aim to incorporate cross-language lexical-conceptual differences (i.e.
instances where equivalence across the L1 German and the L2 English is not one
to one) into existing processing models of the L2 mental lexicon. All
experiments are in English and use native-German advanced learners of English
and a control group of English native speakers. In Chapter 1, a taxonomy of
cross-language differences is presented, levels or representation needed in
modelling L2 lexical processing are discussed, and it is argued that existing
models of the L2 or ‘bilingual’ lexicon have neglected cross-language lexical
differences.
Chapter 2
addresses the processing of intra- and inter-language lexical ambiguity with
homonyms and ‘false friends’ with three semantic priming experiments (Exps 1,
2A and 2B). The experiments support a distinction between L1-L2 orthographic
form links and L1-L2 translational links not controlled by L2 language context.
The data show that L1 meanings of ‘false friends’ e.g. chef (= German {boss}) are not
primed in L2 sentence context but they are primed out of context, while the L2
translations e.g. to clap and to gossip of an L1 homonym klatschen prime one another both in
and out of sentence context.
Chapter 3
explores polysemy in the L1 and its effect on L2 lexical processing with an
acceptability judgement task (Exp 3) using words such as bag and pocket that both translate as
the polysemous German word Tasche. Results showed that German natives
are more likely than natives to make errors in distinguishing between the
English words in sentence contexts. The error effects are argues to be caused
by activation of a non-specific ‘L1’ lexical concept. Chapter 4 addresses
subtler L2 distinctions e.g. shade and shadow not lexicalized in German
e.g. Schatten
with an online reading task (Exp 4) and a true-or-false task (Exp 5). Native
German speakers appear to rely on L1-type non-specific representations when an
explicit judgement demanding the exact interpretation of e.g. shade is required, but in the
online reading task, no evidence of this was obtained.
Chapter 5
addresses ‘general’ verbs such as make (German machen) that differ across
languages in terms of collocational usage. A phrasal acceptability task (Exp 6)
suggests that via the L2-L1 translational link, make in *make a party can activate a lexical
network surrounding the L1 word machen, causing incorrect judgements of acceptability
on the part of Germans. Each respective cross-language difference sheds light
on different modelling issues (i.e. levels and types of representation and
degree and nature of L1-L2 interaction), so in Chapter 6, the empirical
findings are used to explicate aspects of modelling L2 lexical processing that
pertain to cross-language lexical differences.
Working memory and second language
comprehension
Peter Möbius (2000)
The thesis
presents an experimental psycholinguistic investigation of three aspects of
verbal working memory (VWM) in second language comprehension that have received
little attention in the literature: a) The study addresses the question to what
extent the structural similarity or dissimilarity between L1 and L2 determines working
memory capacity in L2 (as measured by a variant of Daneman & Carpenter's
(1980) reading span test) by comparing groups of English L2 speakers with
structurally diverse L1s (Mandarin Chinese and German) and native controls. b)
Building on Perfetti's (1985) efficiency theory of reading and Caplan &
Waters' (1999) modularity theory of VWM, the study seeks to identify
L1-specific processing deficits that account for between-groups differences in
L2-VWM and comprehension. c) The thesis assesses whether psycholinguistic
measures of the efficiency of specific processes (e.g. low-level word
recognition) provide an alternative to reading spans as a diagnostic of L2
reading skill.
Ninety six
subjects participated in a battery of psycholinguistic experiments and conventional
comprehension tests, which revealed the following: a) L1 contributed
significantly to between-group differences in VWM and comprehension when
confounding factors were accounted for. b) There was compelling evidence for
modularity of native VWM, whereas the non-native groups displayed a pattern of
limited modularity/automaticity, mainly due to processing deficits at the
"interpretive level" (Caplan & Waters, 1999). Chinese deficits in
low-level word recognition and in semantic processing were identified as
primary sources of between-group differences in general VWM and comprehension
skill. c) Within groups, measures of the efficiency of interpretive processing
predicted individual comprehension skill, whereas reading spans did not. The
optimal sets of predictor variables were different for the L2 groups.
The limitations
of the Daneman & Carpenter-type indices as diagnostics of L2 comprehension
skill, the implications of the experimental results for a model of working
memory in L2 reading and secondary findings are discussed. It is proposed that
psycholinguistic profiles of the efficiency of discernible processing
components in L2 reading may offer valuable information for the design of
L1-specific second language instruction, and that they can be used to assess
the success of such instruction in overcoming L1-specific "processing
bottlenecks".
The representation of
syntactic information in the bilingual lexicon
Angeliki Salamoura (2005)
This dissertation
reports an experimental psycholinguistic investigation of the representation of
syntactic information in the bilingual mental lexicon. It investigates
cross-language processing of syntactic properties of words at the phrase level
and provides evidence that bears on two interrelated issues: (i) the shared or
independent nature of equivalent L1 and L2 syntactic properties of words in the
bilingual lexicon, and (ii) the factors (e.g., morphological, constituent order
or thematic information) that influence processing and representation of these
syntactic properties. It is argued that existing bilingual models have left
these issues unexplored.
The study
examines syntactic information pertaining both to nouns and verbs. In relation
to nouns, the focus is on the processing of grammatical gender in cases where
it does not coincide with natural gender. Concerning verbs, the syntactic
attribute tested is the argument structure of ditransitive verbs (e.g., give +
NP NP vs. NP PP). To explore the
above questions I employ within- and cross-language tasks that tap into
syntactic representation and processing, such as picture-word interference
(Schriefers, 1993) for investigating effects of gender, and oral sentence
completion paradigms for investigating syntactic priming (Branigan and
Pickering, 1998). The pair of languages used in the experiments is Greek (L1) -
English (L2) in the case of verb argument structure and Greek (L1) –
German (L2) in the case of grammatical gender. The participants are Greek
advanced learners of English or German respectively.
The results
demonstrate cross-language priming both for grammatical gender and verb
argument structure and hence suggest a shared representation for equivalent L1
and L2 syntactic information pertaining to words. More specifically, priming of
grammatical gender was not affected by morphological information such as the
gender transparency or opaqueness of the suffix of the noun stimuli. On the
other hand, priming of verb argument structure was influenced by thematic role
information and was also lexically activated (i.e., triggered by a single
verb). Finally, a model of the representation of syntactic information in the
bilingual mental lexicon that integrates these findings is outlined.