Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T08:29:05.351Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Senior Chinese high school students' awareness of thematic and taxonomic relations in L1 and L2*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2010

DEGAO LI ,
XIANNV ZHANG  and
GUOYING WANG
DEGAO LI*
Affiliation:
School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
XIANNV ZHANG
Affiliation:
Chengfeng Middle School, Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, China
GUOYING WANG
Affiliation:
Department of Chinese, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
*
Address for correspondence: Degao Li, School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, 388#, Yuhangtang Rd., Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, Chinali-degao@163.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the development of their semantic networks, bilinguals can be influenced by the levels of proficiency they have in their second language (L2) and by the age at which they acquired the language. Two exercises, one in word association and one in forced-choice decision-making, were used to test whether the pattern of relative awareness of thematic and taxonomic relations that senior Chinese high school students had in L2 differed from the pattern they had in their first language (L1). The results consistently indicated that (i) the participants appeared as aware of taxonomic relations in L2 as they were in L1; and (ii) they were more readily aware of thematic than of taxonomic relations in L1 but less readily aware of thematic than of taxonomic relations in L2. It was concluded that with taxonomic relations, low-proficiency bilinguals could have a common set of conceptual representations for both L2 and L1, as they are assumed in the revised hierarchical model (RHM) to have. With thematic associations, they might have more difficulty gaining access to their representations in L2 than they might have in L1.

Keywords

low-proficiency bilingualsrelative awarenessthematic associationstaxonomic relations
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 4 , October 2011 , pp. 444 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude to the four reviewers for their constructive comments.

References

Altarriba, J. (2000). Language processing and memory retrieval in Spanish–English bilinguals. Spanish Applied Linguistics, 4, 215–245.Google Scholar
Altarriba, J., & Mathis, K. M. (1997). Conceptual and lexical development in second language acquisition. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 550–568.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Basnight-Brown, D. M., & Altarriba, J. (2007). Differences in semantic and translation priming across languages: The role of language direction and language dominance. Memory & Cognition, 35 (5), 953–965.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blot, K. J., Zárate, M. A., & Paulus, P. B. (2003). Code-switching across brainstorming sessions: Implications for the revised hierarchical model of bilingual language processing. Experimental Psychology, 50 (3), 171–183.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Borghi, A. M., & Caramelli, N. (2003). Situation bounded conceptual organization in children: From action to spatial relations. Cognitive Development, 18, 49–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaffin, R. (1997). Associations to unfamiliar words: Learning the meanings of new words. Memory & Cognition, 25, 203–226.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, H.-C., d'Arcais, G. B. F., & Cheung, S.-L. (1995). Orthographic and phonological activation in recognizing Chinese characters. Psychological Research, 58, 144–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82 (6), 407–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Comesaña, M., Perea, M., Piñeiro, A., & Fraga, I. (2009). Vocabulary teaching strategies and conceptual representations of words in L2 in children: Evidence with novice learners. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 104, 22–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cummins, J. (2001). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society. Los Angeles, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education.Google Scholar
de Groot, A. M. B. (1992). Determinants of word translation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 1001–1018.Google Scholar
de Groot, A. M. B. (1993). Word-type effects in bilingual processing tasks: Support for a mixed-representational system. In Schreuder, R. & Weltens, B. (eds.), The bilingual lexicon, pp. 27–51 Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dong, Y. (1998). Methods used in memory tests of bilinguals’ mental lexicons. Journal of Pla University of Foreign Languages, 21 (5), 1–8.Google Scholar
Dong, Y., Gui, S., & MacWhinney, B. (2005). Shared and separate meanings in the bilingual mental lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 8 (3), 221–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferré, P., Sánchez-Casas, R., & Guasch, M. (2006). Can a horse be a donkey? Semantic and form interference effects in translation recognition in early and late proficient and non-proficient Spanish–Catalan bilinguals. Language Learning, 56 (4), 571–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finkbeiner, M., Forster, K., Nicol, J., & Nakamura, K. (2004). The role of polysemy in masked semantic and translation priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fitzpatrick, T. (2007). Word association patterns: Unpacking the assumptions. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 17 (3), 319–331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
French, R. M., & Jacquet, M. (2004). Understanding bilingual memory: Models and data. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 8 (2), 87–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henriksen, B. (1999). Three dimensions of vocabulary development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 303–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ji, L., Zhang, Z., & Nisbett, R. E. (2004). Is it culture or is it language? Examination of language effects in cross-cultural research on categorization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 (1), 57–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jiang, N., & Forster, K. I. (2001). Cross-language priming asymmetries in lexical decision and episodic recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 32–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalénine, S., Peyrin, C., Pichat, C., Segebarth, C., Bonthoux, F., & Baciu, M. (2009). The sensory-motor specificity of taxonomic and thematic conceptual relations: A behavioral and fMRI study. NeuroImage, 44, 1152–1162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kroll, J. F., Michael, E. B., & Sankaranarayanan, A. (1998). A model of bilingual representation and its implications for second language acquisition. In Healy, A. F. & Bourne, L. E. Jr. (eds.), Foreign language learning: Psycholinguistic studies on training and retention, pp. 365–395. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1990, November). Concept mediation in bilingual translation. Presented at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New Orleans.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Y., Chiang, W., & Hung, H. (2008). Lexical association and false memory for words in two cultures. Journal of Psycholinguist Research, 37, 49–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, D., & Zhang, J. (2009). Chinese deaf adolescents’ free recall of taxonomic, thematic, and slot-filler categories. Journal of Scandinavian Psychology, 50, 355–366.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Li, D., Zhang, J., He, W., Chen, X., Zhang, X., Lin, X., & Li, L. (2009). Deaf adolescents’ word association with taxonomic categories. Chinese Special Education, 114, 28–31.Google Scholar
Li, L., Mo, L., Wang, R., Luo, X., & Chen, Z. (2009). Evidence for long-term cross-language repetition priming in low fluency Chinese–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12 (1), 13–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, X., & Sun, L. (2007). An investigation into second language mental lexicon with word association. Foreign Languages and Translation, 53, 63–67.Google Scholar
Lin, E. L., & Murphy, G. L. (2001). Thematic relations in adults’ concepts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 130 (1), 3–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lucariello, J., & Nelson, K. (1985). Slot–filler categories as memory organizers for young children. Developmental Psychology, 21, 272–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., & Fausey, C. M. (2006). Language-dependent memory in bilingual learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 1025–1047.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marschark, M., Convertino, C., McEvoy, C., & Masteller, A. (2004). Organization and use of the mental lexicon by deaf and hearing individuals. American Annals of the Deaf, 149 (1), 51–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, G. L. (2001). Causes of taxonomic sorting by adults: A test of the thematic-to-taxonomic shift. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8 (4), 834–839.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Namei, S. (2004). Bilingual lexical development: A Persian–Swedish word association study. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14 (3), 363–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, D. L., McEvoy, C. L., & Schreiber, T. A. (1998). The University of South Florida word association, rhyme, and word fragment norms. http://w3.usf.edu/FreeAssociation/ (retrieved February 3, 2004).Google Scholar
Nissen, H. B., & Henriksen, B. (2006). Word class influence on word association test results. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 16 (3), 389–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Gorman, E. (1996). An investigation of the mental lexicon of second language learners. TEANGA: The Irish Yearbook of Applied Linguistics, 16, 15–31.Google Scholar
Ordóñez, C. L., Carlo, M. S., Snow, C. E., & McLaughlin, B. (2002). Depth and breadth of vocabulary in two languages: Which vocabulary skills transfer? Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 719–728.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peña, E., Bedore, L. M., & Rappazzo, C. (2003). Comparison of Spanish, English, and bilingual children's performance across semantic tasks. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools, 34 (1), 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peña, E. D., Bedore, L. M., & Zlatic-Giunta, R. (2002). Category-generation performance of bilingual children: The influence of condition, category and language. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 45 (5), 938–947.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pennequin, V., Fontaine, R., Bonthoux, F. Scheuner, N., & Blaye, A. (2006). Categorization deficit in old age: Reality or artifact? Journal of Adult Development, 13 (1), 1–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perea, M., Duñabeitia, J. A., & Carreiras, M. (2008). Masked associative/semantic priming effects across languages with highly proficient bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 58 (4), 916–930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Potter, M. C., So, K., Eckardt, V., & Feldman, L. (1984). Lexical and conceptual representation in beginning and proficient bilinguals. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 23–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, E., Mervis, C. B., Gray, W. D., Johnson, D. M., & Boyes-Braem, P. (1976). Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology, 8, 382–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sachs, O., Weis, S., Zellagui, N., Huber, W., Zvyagintsev, M., Mathiak, K., & Kircher, T. (2008). Automatic processing of semantic relations in fMRI: Neural activation during semantic priming of taxonomic and thematic categories. Brain Research, 1218, 194–205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sass, K., Sachs, O., Krach, S., & Kircher, T. (2009). Taxonomic and thematic categories: Neural correlates of categorization in an auditory-to-visual priming task using fMRI. Brain Research, 1270, 78–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, D. L., Gerard, L., & Cortese, C. (1984). Independence of lexical access in bilingual word recognition. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 84–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheuner, N., Bonthoux, F., Cannard, C., & Blaye, A. (2004). The role of associative strength and conceptual relations in matching tasks in 4- and 6-year-old children. International Journal of Psychology, 39 (4), 290–304.Google Scholar
Schmitt, N. (1998). Quantifying word association responses: What is native-like? System, 26, 389–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoonbaert, S., Duyck, W., Brysbaert, M., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2009). Semantic and translation priming from a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings. Memory & Cognition, 37 (5), 569–586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scribner, S. (1974). Developmental aspects of categorized recall in a West African society. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 475–494.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheng, L., McGregor, K. K., & Marian, V. (2006). Lexical–semantic organization in bilingual children: Evidence from a repeated word association task. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 49, 572–587.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stenberg, G. (2006). Conceptual and perceptual factors in the picture superiority effect. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 18 (6), 813–847.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. (1999). Thinking and language. Hongzhou: Zhejiang Education Press.Google Scholar
Wolter, B. (2001). Comparing the L1 and L2 mental lexicon: A depth of individual word knowledge model. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23, 41–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolter, B. (2006). Lexical network structures and L2 vocabulary acquisition: The role of L1 lexical/conceptual knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 27 (4), 741–747.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, J., Li, D., & Wu, X. (2008). Deaf adolescents’ representations of taxonomic relations. Acta Psychologica Sinica, 40 (11), 1178–1189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar