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Bilingualism and the semantic-conceptual interface: the influence of language on categorization*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2016

NESTOR VIÑAS-GUASCH Open the ORCID record for NESTOR VIÑAS-GUASCH [Opens in a new window] ,
VIRGINIA C. MUELLER GATHERCOLE  and
HANS STADTHAGEN-GONZALEZ
NESTOR VIÑAS-GUASCH*
Affiliation:
The State Key Laboratory for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Department of Psychiatry, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
VIRGINIA C. MUELLER GATHERCOLE
Affiliation:
Linguistics Program, Florida International University, Miami, U.S.A.
HANS STADTHAGEN-GONZALEZ
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, The University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi, U.S.A.
*
Address for correspondence: Nestor Viñas-Guasch, The Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research, Sassoon Road 5, Rm 409Hong KongNestorvg@hku.hk
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Abstract

These studies address monolinguals' and bilinguals' processing of categories, in order to examine the relationship between concepts and linguistically encoded classes. We focus on languages that differ in their conceptual lexicalization and breadth of application, where one language has a single word (e.g., dedo in Spanish) that corresponds to two words in another language (e.g., English finger and toe). Categories differed across types of semantics-concept mappings, from ‘classical’ cases, involving members close in the conceptual space, to ‘homonyms’, involving conceptually distant items. Bilingual Catalan speakers, and English and Spanish monolinguals judged whether objects were ‘like’ an initial referent presented either with or without a label. Scores were highest in classical categories, lowest in homonyms; higher in narrow than wide categories; and better in labeled than unlabeled cases. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in judgments that conformed with their language, especially in wide categories. We discuss implications for the semantics-cognition interface and bilingualism.

Keywords

categorizationcross-linguistic influencesemantic-conceptual interfaceexecutive functionbilingual advantage
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 5 , November 2017 , pp. 965 - 979
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

Supplementary material can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000754

*

Many thanks to Carme Mas, Daniel Adrover and Eugenia Sebastián for their assistance in data collection. Thank you also to M. Carmen Parafita Couto, Rocío Pérez-Tattam, Enlli M. Thomas, Debbie Mills, and Kathryn Sharp for valuable feedback on the design of the study.

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Appendix B

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Appendix C

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