Managing multiple languages Flashcards
What is multilingualism?
Speaking more than one language
What are the challenges of bilingualism?
Don’t know how many people speak more than one language - general consensus is more than half
focusing on monolinguals ignores how majority of world speak
what does it mean to speak a language? - know words, have a convo etc. different languages have different cultural norms
language is complex
Why is becoming a bilingual complicated?
Age acquired context type of learning - acquired, taught, studied type of vocabulary influence of other language cultural and historical context
Are languages separate or connected?
Overwhelming and consistent evidence for joint activation
What is joint activation?
When both languages are active even when only one is being used
What is the difference between balanced bilinguals and unbalanced bilinguals?
Balanced - equal ability in both languages
Unbalanced - dominant in one, most are unbalanced
What is the influence of two languages?
Bidirectional influence between languages - language 1 influenced l2 and language 2 influenced language 1
What does joint activation mean?
Doing a lot more even if it isn’t needed, has lots to manage
What are cognates?
Words that mean the same thing in two different languages
e.g.. piano - same word, same meaning
What are interlingual homographs?
Word that has the same form but doesn’t mean the same thing e.g. pie, in Spanish means foot
Evidence of joint activation - lexical decision task
Tested dutch and English words
Deciding if it is a word or not
Bilinguals were faster at lexical decisions for cognates
Slower for interlingual homographs when the pronunciation was different - when they conflict
suggests they conflict with each other - lexical access is not language specific
Evidence for joint activation - interlingual homophones in dutch and English
Homophones - words that sound similar
Interference found for both languages - influence occurs for auditory
second language can influence the native language
Evidence for joint activation - simultaneous language use
Chinese-English bilinguals: are two words in English semantically related
no behavioural difference
but changes in ERP signal - indexes semantic priming
evidence of joint activation
Evidence for joint activation: sign language
ASL/English bilinguals asked to judge whether two words were semantically related
judgements were faster when words were related and the signs were similar (match), slower when the words were unrelated and the signs were similar (mismatch)
shows it occurs cross modally - not just auditory
How do bilinguals control one language?
Code switching - switching between languages, especially mid conversation or mid sentence
Code switching - name pictures
Unbalanced German-english bilinguals to name pictures in either German, dutch or switching
cognates faster than non
mixed language condition (switching between German and dutch) - cognate effect was stronger for German than for dutch
in the no switching condition, cognate effect was stronger for dutch then German
in switching contexts, l2 has more of an influence on l1
Code switching - verbal fluency task
Naming words starting with a particular letter
when bilinguals did this in l2 first, they were slower to do same task with same letter in l1
shows whole language vs lexical item inhibition
