FIRST LANGUAGE ACTIVATION DURING SECOND LANGUAGE LEXICAL PROCESSING: An Investigation of Lexical Form, Meaning, and Grammatical Class

Abstract

This study places the predictions of the bilingual interactive activation model (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998) and the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) in the same context to investigate lexical processing in a second language (L2). The performances of two groups of native English speakers, one less proficient and the other more proficient in Spanish, were compared on translation recognition. In this task, participants decided whether two words, one in each language, are translation equivalents. The items in the critical conditions were not translation equivalents and therefore required a "no" response, but were similar to the correct translation in either form or meaning. For example, for translation equivalents such as cara-face, critical distracters included (a) a form-related neighbor to the first word of the pair (e.g., cara-card), (b) a form-related neighbor to the second word of the pair, the translation equivalent (carafact), or (c) a meaning-related word (cara-head). The results showed

L1 Role in Bilinguals’ Mental Lexicon: A Comparative Study between Chinese-English and Alphabetic Bilinguals

“…However, simultaneous activation occurred more reliably in learners of high proficiency than low proficiency (Jared & Kroll, 2001;Silverberg & Samuel, 2004). Findings of parallel L1 activation during L2 processing had been consistent and L1 activation was so stable that it can be observed even in its absence during L2 processing (Sunderman and Kroll, 2006). Both L1 facilitatory effect in phonology and inhibitory effect in orthography on L2, similar to those obtained within the same language, were highly suggestive of integration of L2 phonological and orthographic lexicons into corresponding L1 ones.…”

Implication of Studies on Bilingualism for SLA

“…This means that early in acquisition, the reliance on lexical-level connections between words in the two languages provided a means for transfer (Kroll and Tokowicz, 2001;Sunderman and Kroll, 2006). As you can see in figure -1-, the connection between L2 to L1 transfer is stronger than L1 to L2 transfer during early acquisition; however, the connection between L1 and concepts is stronger than between L2 and the concept.…”

“…The fact that production is linear but comprehension might not be, causes scholars to differentiate between these two (Pienemann, 2003). One of the most frequently used tasks in monolingual and bilingual research is word recognition, in which the participants are to recognize the words orthographically, semantically, or phonologically (Kroll and Dijkstra, 2002;Kroll and Tokowicz, 2001; Sunderman and Kroll, 2006). There are different studies in this respect.…”

“…For example, in the realm of word representation, comprehension, and production, literature has witnessed a dramatic change in its paradigms. At one time, development of the bilingual lexicon was delineated in the "word association model," later within the concept of mediation model and now is described and explained within the revised hierarchical model (Kroll, Michael, Tokowicz, and Dufour, 2006;Kroll and Dijkstra, 2002;Kroll and Tokowicz, 2001;Sunderman and Kroll, 2006). The aim of this article is to describe and study bilingualism from different perspectives of social, individual, cognitive, psychological and political issues.…”

The Use of Cognate Words and Interlingual Homographs to Investigate the Cross-Linguistics in Second Language Processing in Iran

“…In spite of a number of analyses ripened to reply these queries (e.g., Basnight & Altarriba, 2007;Bassetti & Cook, 2011;Bultena, Dijkstra, & van Hell, 2014;Casaponsa, Antón, Pérez, Dunabeitia, &Mikeletegi, 2015;Ferré, Sánchez-Casas, & Guasch, 2006;Guasch, Sánchez-Casas, Ferré, & García-Albea, 2008;Kroll & Linck, 2007;Sunderman & Kroll, 2006), they are still object of controversy. One of the foremost powerful prototypes within the SLA area is the Revised Hierarchic Model (RHM) by Kroll and Stewart (1994).…”