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Representation and Process in Bilingual Lexical Interaction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 May 2016

BARBARA C. MALT  and
AMY L. LEBKUECHER
BARBARA C. MALT*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Lehigh University
AMY L. LEBKUECHER
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Lehigh University
*
Address for correspondence: Barbara C. Malt, Department of Psychology, 17 Memorial Drive East, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 18015, USAbarbara.malt@Lehigh.edu
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Abstract

Bilinguals show word use patterns in each of their languages that differ from those of monolinguals. One interpretation is that, for bilinguals, the word meanings of one language are influenced by those of the other. Another is that the cross-language influence lies in on-line processes – word retrieval probabilities or word form activation levels. To discriminate between interpretations, we asked Mandarin–English bilinguals to name household objects in their L1 and L2 via forced choice instead of free production. The options given were the monolingual-preferred choices, eliminating memory retrieval demands and keeping those words at a high level of activation. For comparison, monolinguals of each language performed the same task in their native language. Differences from monolinguals in word choice were substantially reduced, especially in L1, but bilingual patterns still showed some cross-language influence in both L1 and L2. This outcome implicates cross-language influences on both bilingual processing and meaning representations.

Keywords

bilingualismlexical interactioncross-linguistic influenceword learningword meaninglexical categorizationMandarin
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Issue 5 , November 2017 , pp. 867 - 885
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1057885 to Barbara Malt and Ping Li. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. We thank Lauren O'Brien, Aislinn Rowan, Joanne Chou, Minhao Li, and Yinzi Wang for help preparing and running the experiments, and Shin-Yi Fang, Mengyan Li, Ping Li, Huichun Zhu, and Ben Zinszer for assistance in recruiting monolingual Mandarin speakers. Mengyan Li provided helpful discussion of results and Ben Zinszer provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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