bilinguilasm Flashcards
blingualism
includes all individuals who use more than one language
groups distinguished by proficiency, dominance, age of acquisition, where they live, demands placed on them to use each language
l1 = first (native) language
l2=second language
what percentage of the world is bilingual
really hard to know
most current estimates range from 50-70
traditional story in psycholinguistics
focused on people’s mother language, not bilinguals
hard to learn a second language in adulthood
l2 fundamentally different and separate from native language
l1 should translate to l2 but not the other way around
three discoveries about bilingualism
- bilinguals are not two monolinguals in one - both languages are active and competing
- the bilinguals language system is permeable in both directions - critically, the l1 changes in the response to learning and using an l2
- not all bilinguals are the same. bilinguals differ by virtue of where they live and the demands that are placed on them to use each language
parallel activation
both languages are active regardless of the requirement to use one language alone: in reading, listening, or planning speech
cognates
words that have similar properties across languages - same form, same meaning
ex. piano in french and eng
evidence for parallel activation
homographs
words that share the same form but have different meanings in difference languages
ex. coin in french and english
evidence for parallel activation
cognates and homographs as evidence for paralllel activation
bilinguals recognize cognates more quickly but homographs more slowly than language unique words - monolinguals do not show these effects
picture naming task
ps shown pictures and name out loud in english
- had spanish eng bilinguals and japanese eng bilinguals
had dif types of pictures
- triple cognates - shared meaning in all three languages - should be fast for everyone
- two cognate
- only overlap in two languages - behaves as non cognates for two groups
found that people were faster for cognates, and slower for non cognates
- means that language not in use modulated time for bilinguals to respond to pictures (remember everyone responded in english)
libben and titone?
do bilinguals show effects of parallel activation during reading - if sentence procides a cue to language membership, maybe no effect?
eye tracked people reading sentences
initial stages of comprehension: first fixation duration: length of the 1st time eye fixates on the taget
later stages: total fixation duration: length of all eye fixations
longer fixations = more comprehension difficulty
gave sentences with cognates or a matched control
low contstraint - lots of other options for the word
high constrain - context demands use of the word
in early stages: parallel activation regardless of sentence constraint
late: parallel activation resolved for contexts that provide a high semantic constraint
semantic relatedness task
people shown pairs of words and have to indicate if the words are semantically related
morford et al
tested asl-english bilinguals to see if they are affected by their knowledge of sign language when completing a semantic relatedness task in english
included pairs that were phonologically related in asl (similar hand gestures)
found that bilinguals to judge english when the asl converges and slower when it conflicts - monolinguals don’t show this effect
lexical decision task
ps had to identify english words out of nonsense words on the screen
bice and kroll
examined cognate effects in monolinguals and l2 learners of spanish with an english language lexical decision task
tested behavioural responses
- no cognate effect behaviourally
erps (brain) - voltage fluctuations that are time locked to an event
- found a reduced n400 (associated with ease of lexical retrieval) for cognates
verbal fluency task
ps given a category and given 30s to name as many words as they can in a category
