French Bilinguals Research Articles

False memory across languages: Implicit associative response vs fuzzy trace views

We investigated false recognition across languages using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. A group of English–French bilinguals studied lists of converging associates, some lists in English and some in French, and then performed a recognition test containing studied list items and nonstudied critical lures whose language matched or mismatched the language at study. Participants were instructed to answer old only if the test cue was in the same language as the studied word. The results yielded a robust false memory rate both within-language and across-languages. The effect of the study-test language shift was much larger for list items than for critical lures. This finding suggests that memory representations for critical lures contain primarily semantic gist traces and little surface information, and hence is more consistent with the fuzzy trace view than with the implicit associative response view. In sum, the study demonstrates the existence of false memory across languages, and provides information about the memory traces underlying veridical and illusory recognition.

Forward and backward number translation requires conceptual mediation in both balanced and unbalanced bilinguals.

It is much debated whether translation is semantically mediated or based on word-word associations at the lexical level. In 2 experiments with Dutch (L1)-French (L2) bilinguals, the authors showed that there is a semantic number magnitude effect in both forward and backward translation of number words: It takes longer to translate number words representing large quantities (e.g., acht, huit [eight]) than small quantities (e.g., twee, deux [two]). In a 3rd experiment, the authors replicated these effects with number words that had been acquired only just before the translation task. Finally, it was shown that the findings were not due to the restricted semantic context of the stimuli. These findings strongly suggest that translation processes can be semantically mediated in both directions, even at low levels of L2 proficiency.

Language attitudes in Morocco following recent changes in language policy

This article reports on a study of language attitudes conducted among high school students and teachers in Khouribga, a town in central Morocco, in December 2002, following changes in government language policy outlined in the Charter for Education and Training, 2000. The paper gives a brief background to the sociolinguistic situation in Morocco, and the language policy pursued since Independence in 1956, and outlines the changes proposed in the Charter. It then turns to the findings of the study, focusing on attitudes towards French, Arabic and bilingualism. Both students and teachers appear to be widely in favour of a return to Arabic—French bilingualism within the education system, and approve decisions to introduce foreign languages at an earlier stage in the curriculum. Views on the benefits of Arabization are mixed, but there is a general consensus that Morocco will benefit from increased bilingualism.

Conceptual Representation of Verbs in Bilinguals: Semantic Field Effects and a Second-Language Performance Paradox

It is well known that bilinguals perform better in their first language (L1) than in their second lanaguage (L2) in a wide range of linguistic tasks. In recent studies, however, the authors have found that bilingual participants can demonstrate faster response times to L1 stimuli than to L2 stimuli in one classification task and the reverse in a different classification task. In the current study, they investigated the reasons for this “L2-better-than-L1” effect. English–French bilinguals performed one word relatedness and two categorization tasks with verbs of motion (e.g., run) and psychological verbs (e.g., admire) in both languages. In the word relatedness task, participants judged how closely related pairs of verbs from both categories were. In a speeded semantic categorization task, participants classified the verbs according to their semantic category (psychological or motion). In an arbitrary classification task, participants had to learn how verbs had been assigned to two arbitrary categories. Participants performed better in L1 in the semantic classification task but paradoxically better in L2 in the arbitrary classification task. To account for these effects, the authors used the ratings from the word relatedness task to plot three-dimensional “semantic fields” for the verbs. Cross-language field differences were found to be significantly related to the paradoxical performance and to fluency levels. The results have implications for understanding of how bilinguals represent verbs in the mental lexicon.

Lexical access in spoken word production by bilinguals: evidence from the semantic competitor priming paradigm

The competitive nature of the lexical selection process during spoken word production is well established in monolinguals. In this paper we explore the implication of this process for spoken word production in bilinguals. A cross-language semantic competitor priming effect was demonstrated, which shows that cross-language lexical competition is a feature of the word production system of the unbalanced English–French bilinguals who participated in the experiment. Experimental evidence was also found which suggests that a selected language bias effected through inhibition of the unwanted language plays an important role in resolving the cross-language lexical competition during bilingual word production in a selected language. The data further suggest that the dominance of the unwanted language relative to the selected language determines the presence/absence or “strength” of inhibition through which the selected language bias is effected. These findings are also interpreted in terms of a recent language-specific lexical selection account of bilingual lexical access.

Language Switching Costs in Bilingual Visual Word Recognition

Grainger and Beauvillain (1987) found performance costs in the lexical decision task when bilingual participants switched languages in recognizing words. They also found that these costs could be eliminated by the use of language-specific orthographic cues. This led to the suggestion that switch costs arise from within the bilingual lexicon. An alternative account is that switch costs arise from outside the lexicon, a result of competition between control structures put in place to coordinate activation of the lexicon with task-appropriate responses (Green, 1998a, 1998b; Von Studnitz & Green, 1997). In Experiment 1 using English–French bilinguals, we showed that the apparent role of orthographic cues in Grainger and Beauvillain's study was probably due to a missing control condition. With this control condition in place, language-specific orthography did not reduce the switch cost. Two further experiments investigated the locus of the switch cost and found support for the notion that most of the switch cost originates from outside rather than inside the bilingual lexicon.

Phonological Recoding in the First and Second Language Reading of Skilled Bilinguals *

This study investigated phonological recoding in reading by highly skilled English and French bilinguals. Bilinguals with approximately equal reading rates in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages and bilinguals with significantly slower rates in L2 than in L1 participated in lexical decision and sentence verification tasks in each language with stimuli designed to assess sensitivity to the phonological properties of words. The results suggested that: (1) in general, slow L2 readers were not more dependent upon phonological recoding than were fast L2 readers; (2) for slow readers, L2 presented a heavier processing load in working memory than it did for fast readers; and (3) there exist different phonological effects specific to English and French.

Language Attitudes among Arabic–French Bilinguals in Morocco

Those familiar with a bilingual community may be aware of the passionate reactions bilingualism can inspire in those who experience it. The Arabic-French bilingualism examined here, for instance, has been both denigrated as the root of many social and psychological problems and glorified as a source of enrichment which gives the Moroccan the benefits of two separate cultures. This book attempts to counter-balance previous highly emotional discussions by looking at the phenomenon from a more objective viewpoint, using various data-gathering methods, while still preserving the insights which are perhaps available only to a Moroccan who has lived the conflicts of bilingualism in his everyday life. It looks at the bilingual's attitudes towards his two languages and the roles each language plays in Moroccan society, showing that these may affect the way a bilingual is perceived by others and his own view of the world The book considers the implications of these attitudes for future language planning in Morocco, where Arabization is in progress and for other bilingual countries. It should be of interest, not only to those concerned with bilingual education or language planning, but to all who have experienced the conflicts of bilingualism themselves, or who are in contact with a bilingual community.

The bilingual lexicon: Language-specific units in an integrated network

Five experiments were conducted to evaluate hypotheses concerning lexical organization in bilinguals. Previous work has shown that the repetition effect in lexical decision is restricted to intralingual conditions for English and Hindi. Experiments 1–3 each involved 12 English—French bilinguals and demonstrated that a previous finding generalizes to more similar languages and orthographies (English and French) and that it is unaffected by mixed-language test conditions. The results also demonstrated that although interlingual transfer occurs in response to translative activity during encoding, transfer does not occur as a result of tasks which emphasize meaning rather than translation. Experiment 4 involved 12 English—Hindi bilinguals in a two-word lexical decision task with semantically related and unrelated words under pure and mixed-language conditions. The results confirmed Meyer and Ruddy's (1974, Bilingual word recognition: Organization and retrieval of a alternative lexical codes) unpublished report that semantic priming is present under mixed as well as pure language conditions, and further showed that when language is defined by orthography—as is the case for English and Hindi—there is no overall deficit for mixed-language conditions. Experiment 5 demonstrated that for interlingual semantic priming to occur under successive presentation conditions, the related concepts must follow one another immediately. The overall pattern of results suggests that although the unit of lexical representation in bilinguals is language specific, the units function in an integrated network.

Lexical and conceptual representation in beginning and proficient bilinguals

Two hypotheses about the association between the equivalent words in a bilingual's two languages are considered. The word association hypothesis proposes that a direct association is established between words in the two languages. During second-language acquisition, that association is used to understand and produce words in the second language by retrieving a word in the first language. The concept mediation hypothesis proposes that the only connection between the two languages is via an underlying, amodal conceptual system, one to which pictured objects also have access. The hypotheses make different predictions about the time to name pictures in the second language relative to the time to translate first-language words into the second language. Two experiments are reported, one with proficient Chinese—English bilinguals and the second with nonfluent English—French bilinguals (American high school students). Subjects read words aloud, named pictures, and translated words; one Chinese—English group categorized pictures and words. The results were consistent with the concept mediation hypothesis and contradicted predictions of the word association hypothesis. There was no evidence for a direct association between words in the two languages in either bilingual group.

De Rol Van Toonhoogtekontoeren Bij Het Segmenteren Van Spraak Door Luisteraars.Een Contrastieve Studie Frans-Nederlands

A comparison was made between French and Dutch pitch contours at the level of the word and the prosodic word. The overlap between the two systems was supposed to cause problems in the segmentation of words in speech communication for French dominant and Dutch dominant French-Dutch bilinguals. Two types of experiments were reported. In the first type native speakers of French (French dominant French-Dutch bilinguals) read Dutch sentences. These sentences are ambiguous without orthographic or intonational specification. The resulting French coloured realisations were interpreted by native speakers of Dutch in a way which differed from the interpretation suggested by Dutch orthography. In a second type of experiment pitch contours were manipulated by means of a resynthesis program. The same kind of sentences as in the first experiment were read by native speakers of French (French dominant French-Dutch bilinguals). On the sentences produced by these speakers a Dutch pitch contour was superimposed. This contour corresponded to the orthographic form in which the sentence had been presented to the native speakers of French. Other prosodie or segmental parameters were left unmodified. The resulting sentences were presented to native speakers of Dutch. The results showed that these native speakers of Dutch interpreted these manipulated sentences according to the orthography of the original Dutch stimulus. To control for the influence of other prosodie or segmental features of French in the realisation of the Dutch sentences by the French speakers, a number of Dutch sentences of the same kind as in the previous experiments were read by native speakers of Dutch. Their realisations were provided with a pitch contour corresponding to the contours the French speakers had realised on the same type of sentences. The effect of the pitch modification on the interpretation of these sentences by native speakers of Dutch was the same as the effect of having French dominant bilinguals read the original Dutch sentences.

Second language reading in fluent bilinguals

ABSTRACTMany bilinguals, who are fluent second language users in normal commmunicative situations, nevertheless read more slowly in that language. The present study examines whether this performance difference is specific to reading or whether its occurrence is accompanied by similar differences in the auditory modality. Fluent English and French bilinguals were required to adjust the delivery rate of spoken first and second language texts so as to maximize speed of delivery while maintaining full comprehension. The results showed that the pattern of listening rates for the second language relative to the first mirrored the pattern of reading rates. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for second language reading research.