영어 L2 학습자의 어휘부 활성화: 평행성을 중심으로

Abstract

It is well established that multiple words with phonetic similarities are activated in the monolingual processing of spoken words. Yet relatively less is known about cross-language activation of phonetically similar words in the bilingual minds. The present study explored cross-language activation of mental lexicon in the spoken word processing of Korean learners of English (i.e., Korean L1-English L2 group). The data from Korean learners of English group were compared with those from native speakers of English (i.e.,English L1 only group). In the experimental task, they were asked to listen to spoken words in English while looking at a display with a target picture, a competitor picture whose Korean translation was phonetically overlapped with the target object, and two pictures of unrelated distractors. Their eye movements were analyzed. The Korean L1-English L2 group looked more often at the pictures of cross-language competitor than English L1 only group did. This finding strongly suggests the presence of non-selective access to both lexicons among the Korean learners of English during the spoken word processing in English. Namely, both L1 and L2 lexicons are spontaneously activated even when they were asked to process the spoken words in L2.(Kyung Hee University)