What does it mean to know a word? Factor structure of lexical competence

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to identify the factor structure of lexical competence. For this, four different models of lexical competence (a unitary model, two correlated models, and a higher-order model) were hypothesized with availability and accessibility of different types of word knowledge taken into account. The data were obtained from 115 Korean EFL high school students. Participants took multiple vocabulary tests to measure to what extent they had knowledge of word meanings and meaning relations and how efficiently they retrieved each dimension of the knowledge. The models were tested using confirmatory factor analysis to see whether the collected data supported the hypothesized conceptualizations of lexical competence. The results showed that a higher-order model with availability and accessibility of word knowledge as two distinctive yet covarying second-order latent factors best represented lexical competence for the observed data in this study. This provides empirical evidence for the structure of lexical competence consisting of separate layers of language ability as well as different aspects of word knowledge.