Communicative relevance: Color references in bilingual and trilingual speakers

Abstract

The study examined granularity of lexical partitioning of the blue area in speakers of English, which encodes the termblue; Russian, which encodes two terms, sinij[dark/navy blue] andgoluboj[light/sky blue]; and Ukrainian, which encodes the termssynij[dark/navy blue] andblakytnyjandgolubyj[light/sky blue]. Five groups of participants took part in the study: (1) 30 L1 speakers of English, (2) 30 L1 speakers of Russian, (3) 30 Russian–English bilinguals, (4) 30 English–Russian bilinguals, and (5) 25 Ukrainian–Russian–English trilinguals. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that L1 Russian speakers referred to different types of blue significantly more frequently than all other groups, while bilinguals patterned with L1 English speakers. These findings suggest that classroom exposure to L2 Russian does not make the distinction betweensinijandgolubojcommunicatively relevant for L1 English speakers and that everyday use of L2 English may trigger attrition of the contrast in L1 Russian.