Lexical Acquisition Research Articles

What lexical acquisition has to say about a non-lexicalist architecture of grammar – and vice-versa

What lexical acquisition has to say about a non-lexicalist architecture of grammar – and vice-versa

Glossed video keyword captions and L2 vocabulary acquisition: an eye-tracking study

The effect of video captions on vocabulary acquisition is a growing topic of interest among L2 researchers. Expanding on this line of inquiry, this study explores how keyword captions enhanced with first language (L1) and second language (L2) glosses (i.e. definitions or brief explanations of unfamiliar words) impact L2 learners’ vocabulary acquisition. This study involved 101 Korean undergraduate students randomly assigned to a baseline (keyword caption only), L1 gloss (keyword caption + L1 gloss), or L2 gloss (keyword caption + L2 gloss) group. The participants viewed a video that corresponded to their group, during which their eye movements were tracked and recorded. Subsequently, the participants completed two vocabulary tests assessing word form and meaning recall. Linear mixed-effects analysis revealed that keyword captions with L1 and L2 glosses resulted in distinct attentional allocation and contributed differently to lexical acquisition. Notably, although the three groups spent similar durations reading the target word forms, the L1 gloss group significantly outperformed the other two groups in word form recall scores. Furthermore, although the L2 gloss group spent three times longer reading L2 glosses compared to the time the L1 gloss group spent reading L1 glosses, the latter had significantly higher scores in the form translation test. These findings have significant implications for L2 pedagogy, particularly regarding the choice between target-language-exclusive or bilingual approaches.

Cognate beginnings to bilingual lexical acquisition

Cognate beginnings to bilingual lexical acquisition

Multimodal cues in L2 lexical tone acquisition: current research and future directions

This review discusses the effectiveness of visual and haptic cues for second language (L2) lexical tone acquisition, with a special focus on observation and production of hand gestures. It explains how these cues can facilitate initial acquisition of L2 lexical tones via multimodal depictions of pitch. In doing so, it provides recommendations for incorporation of multimodal cues into L2 lexical tone pedagogy.

Mining for Words: The effect of Minecraft on incidental vocabulary learning of young EFL learners

The fundamental component of language learning is the lexicon. Among various ways employed to facilitate vocabulary development, playing video games can highly contribute to developing vocabulary incidentally. This study examines how playing digital games impactsEFL learners’ incidentalvocabulary acquisition. It also investigates gender in digitalequity using a digital game, i.e., Minecraft. A total of 73 male and female Iranian pupils between the ages of 9 and 14 were recruited to examine whether incidental vocabulary acquisitionthrough gameplay was effective and to determine whether gender could affect the results. As such, the two-way ANCOVA was run through SPSS to analyze the data. The results indicated that the gamers performed far better than the memorization group. However, no interaction effect between gender and the dependent variable was observed. The implications of the findings can benefit educators and young learners to choose appropriate digital games as supplementarytools for L2 lexical acquisition. The findings contribute to the increasing research on digital games’ potential as an effective tool for promoting vocabulary development.

Phonological networks and systematicity in early lexical acquisition.

Infants' early words tend to be phonologically similar. This may reflect a systematic approach to early production, as they adapt newly acquired forms to fit familiar structures in the output. This "rich-get-richer" approach to phonological acquisition, known as preferential attachment in network science, proposes that new words cluster together with existing phonologically similar words in the lexicon (or network). This contrasts with recent work (e.g., Fourtassi et al., 2020) showing that the learning environment is the key predictor of learning (preferential acquisition). This study expands on previous analyses of vocabulary norm data to analyze naturalistic data, namely phonetic transcriptions of nine infants' word productions, from word onset to age 2;6. Network growth models test whether (a) acquisition is best modeled through preferential attachment or preferential acquisition, (b) the trajectory of network growth changes over time, and (c) there are any differences in network growth of adult target forms versus infants' actual productions. Results show that preferential attachment predicts acquisition of new words more convincingly than preferential acquisition: newly acquired words are phonologically similar to existing words in the network. Furthermore, systematicity becomes increasingly apparent over the course of acquisition, and infants produce their early words more systematically than we would expect from looking at target forms alone. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Infants' abilities to segment word forms from spectrally degraded speech in the first year of life.

Infants begin to segment word forms from fluent speech-a crucial task in lexical processing-between 4 and 7 months of age. Prior work has established that infants rely on a variety of cues available in the speech signal (i.e., prosodic, statistical, acoustic-segmental, and lexical) to accomplish this task. In two experiments with French-learning 6- and 10-month-olds, we use a psychoacoustic approach to examine if and how degradation of the two fundamental acoustic components extracted from speech by the auditory system, namely, temporal (both frequency and amplitude modulation) and spectral information, impact word form segmentation. Infants were familiarized with passages containing target words, in which frequency modulation (FM) information was replaced with pure tones using a vocoder, while amplitude modulation (AM) was preserved in either 8 or 16 spectral bands. Infants were then tested on their recognition of the target versus novel control words. While the 6-month-olds were unable to segment in either condition, the 10-month-olds succeeded, although only in the 16 spectral band condition. These findings suggest that 6-month-olds need FM temporal cues for speech segmentation while 10-month-olds do not, although they need the AM cues to be presented in enough spectral bands (i.e., 16). This developmental change observed in infants' sensitivity to spectrotemporal cues likely results from an increase in the range of available segmentation procedures, and/or shift from a vowel to a consonant bias in lexical processing between the two ages, as vowels are more affected by our acoustic manipulations. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Although segmenting speech into word forms is crucial for lexical acquisition, the acoustic information that infants' auditory system extracts to process continuous speech remains unknown. We examined infants' sensitivity to spectrotemporal cues in speech segmentation using vocoded speech, and revealed a developmental change between 6 and 10 months of age. We showed that FM information, that is, the fast temporal modulations of speech, is necessary for 6- but not 10-month-old infants to segment word forms. Moreover, reducing the number of spectral bands impacts 10-month-olds' segmentation abilities, who succeed when 16 bands are preserved, but fail with 8 bands.

Supplemental Material for Phonological Networks and Systematicity in Early Lexical Acquisition

Supplemental Material for Phonological Networks and Systematicity in Early Lexical Acquisition

Psycholinguistic Explanation in Lexical Acquisition of Second Language (L2) Adult Learners

Psycholinguistic Explanation in Lexical Acquisition of Second Language (L2) Adult Learners

A prosodic account of complex predicate acquisition in Mam: A Mayan language

The Mayan language Mam uses complex predicates to express events. Complex predicates map multiple semantic elements onto a single word, and consequently have a blend of lexical and phrasal features. The chameleon-like nature of complex predicates provides a window on children’s ability to express phrasal combinations at the one-word stage of language development. The ubiquity of complex predicates in the adult language insures that children will produce complex predicates as some of their first words. The verb complex in Mam has obligatory inflections for aspect, person, and to a degree direction. The inflections vary in degree of attachment between syllable segments, affixes, and clitics. Inflections with vowels are phonologically free, while inflections without vowels attach as either syllable segments or affixes. The Mam verb complex requires the addition of a phrasal layer to prosodic models of lexical acquisition. The paper used this extended version of prosodic theory to make five predictions for the acquisition of the verb complex. The paper analyzes production data for three children between 2;0 and 2;8 acquiring the northern variety of Mam spoken in San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. The children’s production data for both the intransitive and transitive verb complexes support all five predictions to some degree. The children produced prefixes more frequently on vowel-initial stems than on consonant-initial stems, and they produced imperative suffixes more frequently than prefixes on consonant-initial stems. The children exhibited developmental differences and produced phrasal contractions that the prosodic theory did not predict. The results underline the need to integrate prosody into models of morphosyntactic development, and highlight the significance of complex predicates for theories of language acquisition.

A Review of Research on The Neural Mechanisms of Lexical Tone Acquisition

The phenomenon of bilingualism is becoming more and more important as international communication becomes closer and closer. In the past, linguists' studies on second language acquisition by bilinguals seldom dealt with the language processing mechanism of the human brain itself, but the further development of science and technology has made it possible to quantify the laws of language learning at the neural level. In this paper, the author reviews the literature on the brain-neural mechanisms of tone perception in the primary stage of bilinguals from the perspectives of native language and bilingual tone perception in light of the previous research results. At present, the main research methods adopted in the study of tone acquisition are phonological experimental research and listening and dialectic research. However, the research on tone perception mostly focuses on differentiation and recognition experiments, the use of neuroscience technology is still insufficient, and the combination between disciplines is not close enough.

Principles of implementing linguodidactic approaches in the pre-professional level students' terminological vocabulary formation

The phased transition to trilingual education in secondary schools in Kazakhstan led to the need to undertake professionally oriented foreign language teaching, as well as updating curricula and learning materials through the integration of subject content with language learning. The effectiveness of studying comprehensive subjects depends on proficiency in subject-specific target terminology. The article mainly focuses on the principles of implementing linguodidactic approaches in the pre-professional level learners` specialized vocabulary formation, providing insights for teachers according to terminology teaching. This paper presents a short theoretical overview and practical research observations in the field of specialized vocabulary instruction to students. The purpose of the study is to identify an effective implementation practice of linguodidactic approaches in the content of specific lexical acquisition by pre-professional level students of the comprehensive subjects (Physics, Biology, Chemistry, IT/ Computer Science) taught in English. The study uses methods of observation, monitoring, and comparative analysis, as well as literary analysis of secondary education and its pre-professional level requirements in Kazakhstan and ESP methodology of teaching. The article formulates methodological recommendations for effective pre-professional classroom management as an efficient realization of linguodidactic approaches in terminological vocabulary teaching in the target (English) language.

Influence of Mother Tongue Transfer on Second Language Lexical Acquisition and Countermeasures

Influence of Mother Tongue Transfer on Second Language Lexical Acquisition and Countermeasures

The role of imageability in noun and verb acquisition in children with Down syndrome and their peers with typical development.

Our main objective was to analyze the role of imageability in relation to the age of acquisition (AoA) of nouns and verbs in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) and their peers with typical development (TD). The AoA of nouns and verbs was determined using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs adapted to the profile of children with DS. The AoA was analyzed using a linear mixed-effect model, including factors of imageability, group, and word class, and controlling for word frequency and word length. This analysis showed that high imaginable and short words were acquired early. Children with DS acquired the words later than TD peers. An interaction between imageability and group indicated that the effect of imageability was greater in the DS group. We discuss this effect considering DS children's phonological memory difficulties. The overall results confirm the role that imageability and word length play in lexical acquisition, an effect that goes beyond word class.

The Impact of Creative Writing Activity on EFL Learners' Non-Core Vocabulary Acquisition

<em>In the context of ELT and EFL classrooms, creative writing has been underutilized in language learning and critical consciousness development (Stillar, 2013). This paper presents a quantitative approach that aims to explore the impact of a creative writing activity in terms of non-core vocabulary acquisition within B2-level EFL classrooms. By conveying a set of in-class and autonomous creative writing activities, the study deepens not only into vocabulary acquisition but also into second language acquisition (SLA) purposes. The investigation aims to discover the extent to which the instruction of creative writing activities fosters EFL learners’ acquisition of non-nuclear vocabulary. Following a quantitative methodology, a non-core vocabulary pre-test and post-test were administered to students. These tests included sections for analyzing students' knowledge of non-core vocabulary and the linguistic repertoire used in vignette descriptions (strip comics). Results from a paired samples t-test suggested that integrating creative writing activities in EFL environments not only enhanced lexical acquisition but also fostered detachment from cultural nuances and the influence of the students' mother tongue. All the scrutinized elements within the students’ linguistic repertoire were improved after the creative writing instruction. Within this analysis, the verbs and adjectives were the elements that were the most improved in terms of specificity and concreteness. Overall, the study sheds light on the potential benefits of integrating creative writing activities in EFL classrooms. The findings hold promising implications for EFL educators seeking innovative strategies to enhance language learning and intercultural competence.</em>

The development of tone discrimination in infancy: Evidence from a cross-linguistic, multi-lab report.

We report the findings of a multi-language and multi-lab investigation of young infants' ability to discriminate lexical tones as a function of their native language, age and language experience, as well as of tone properties. Given the high prevalence of lexical tones across human languages, understanding lexical tone acquisition is fundamental for comprehensive theories of language learning. While there are some similarities between the developmental course of lexical tone perception and that of vowels and consonants, findings for lexical tones tend to vary greatly across different laboratories. To reconcile these differences and to assess the developmental trajectory of native and non-native perception of tone contrasts, this study employed a single experimental paradigm with the same two pairs of Cantonese tone contrasts (perceptually similar vs. distinct) across 13 laboratories in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North-America testing 5-, 10- and 17-month-old monolingual (tone, pitch-accent, non-tone) and bilingual (tone/non-tone, non-tone/non-tone) infants. Across the age range and language backgrounds, infants who were not exposed to Cantonese showed robust discrimination of the two non-native lexical tone contrasts. Contrary to this overall finding, the statistical model assessing native discrimination by Cantonese-learning infants failed to yield significant effects. These findings indicate that lexical tone sensitivity is maintained from 5 to 17 months in infants acquiring tone and non-tone languages, challenging the generalisability of the existing theoretical accounts of perceptual narrowing in the first months of life. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: This is a multi-language and multi-lab investigation of young infants' ability to discriminate lexical tones. This study included data from 13 laboratories testing 5-, 10-, and 17-month-old monolingual (tone, pitch-accent, non-tone) and bilingual (tone/non-tone, non-tone/non-tone) infants. Overall, infants discriminated a perceptually similar and a distinct non-native tone contrast, although there was no evidence of a native tone-language advantage in discrimination. These results demonstrate maintenance of tone discrimination throughout development.

‘Eating’, ‘drinken’ or both?

Network analytical approaches have been applied to the study of young bilinguals’ word learning strategies by a growing body of research in various settings (for a review, see Wojcik, 2018). They have investigated the effect of one language on the structure of the other’s network or compared both networks, trying to identify similarities. These studies have identified features that influence bilinguals’ acquisition process: frequency, phonological features (Bilson et al., 2015), the presence of translation equivalents and cognates (Bosch & Ramon-Casas, 2014), and familiarity (Wojcik, 2018), among others.The present study was an exploratory attempt to capture the structure of the receptive vocabulary networks of young bilingual children, by combining both of their languages. Network analysis can model the connections or links of word-nodes based on selected lexical features. The links in the present social networks were determined by how many of the participating children knew two words at the same time. This knowledge was previously tested with the English (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) and Dutch (Schlichting, 2005) versions of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) with children with early exposure to both languages (Aalberse et al. [MIND-team], 2021). Exposure to Dutch and English at children's homes and daycare centers for each individual child was assessed through a parental and daycare questionnaire respectively (MIND-team, 2021). Social network analysis, using the ORA-lite software (Altman & Reminga, 2018), was used to create a network for all the children (N=297; MAge= 34.5 months, SDAge= 6.5 months) and two networks of two subgroups based on exposure (Group A: higher English than Dutch exposure, and Group B: higher Dutch than English exposure). Average exposure scores were used as a threshold and cut-off point to determine ‘high’ and ‘low’ exposure groups. The Leiden algorithm was applied to the networks (Traag et al., 2019). The algorithm is designed to identify groups, sets, and clusters within dense networks with many nodes and links.The comparison of these three networks revealed the role of exposure in acquisition and hints at the strategies employed by bilingual children in word learning. The total group of children, without exposure factored in, showed clear clustering along the language divide, with Dutch words being more central in the network. To account for exposure, the total group was divided into two subgroups, one with higher exposure to Dutch (N=118; MAge= 34.84 months) and one with higher exposure to English (N=100, MAge= 34.23 months). Whereas the subgroup with higher Dutch exposure mirrored the clustering trends of the total group of children, the subgroup with higher English exposure showed higher cross-language clustering, with both English and Dutch words being in the same Leiden cluster more consistently in the network. In the group with higher Dutch exposure, the three node-sets detected, through the Leiden algorithm, were 1) central Dutch words, 2) peripheral Dutch words and 3) peripheral English words. Contrastively, for the group with higher English exposure, the central node-set included words from both languages. This marks a group of words (from both languages) with increased learnability and potential links with each other.Joint membership in frequent semantic categories (animal names, food, clothing, small household items, and body parts) and phonological features (word length and initial sound) are the most likely candidates that guided cross-language clustering. Word difficulty affected the structure of the network as a whole: words belonging to higher PPVT sets were known by fewer children than the ones in lower sets.Overall, exposure scores were shown to have an important effect on cross-language clustering and network structure. To which relative the children spoke to and for how long they spoke to them per day (MIND-team, 2021) could determine the centrality of words in the network. Children growing up in the Netherlands have a high exposure to Dutch, as the societal language. That meant that the English group (higher English exposure) had more exposure to Dutch than the Dutch group (higher Dutch exposure) had to English. For the English group, that led to a more balanced exposure to both languages, which most likely led to higher cross-language clustering for learned words.This study offers a new methodology for studying lexical acquisition, with the aim of capturing the interconnected nature of bilinguals’ languages. The results from the balanced exposure group are in accordance with emergentist accounts of language acquisition (Claussenius-Kalman et al., 2021), suggesting that ‘one word [might utilize] the conceptual packaging invoked by a word in the other language' (Bilson et al., 2015). There were semantic and phonological features that linked words across languages in learning. No strong effect of cross-linguistic learning was found for translation equivalents and cognates, because these items were rare between the English and Dutch versions of the PPVT. Nonetheless, the contributions of the present study are an added step to the investigation of the factors that might drive connectivity in lexical acquisition.

Influence of Lexical Development on Reading and Spelling Skills: Effects of Enhancement on Second-Grade Children in Primary School.

Previous studies suggest that lexical competence is an important factor that influences reading skills and spelling accuracy in primary school children. Understanding the relationship between these skills will provide valuable insights to improve reading and writing enhancement and intervention strategies. The aim of this pre-post longitudinal study is to examine the effectiveness of an enhancement program, in which there are activities proposed through a narrative and metacognitive methodology, designed to develop the cognitive processes of lexical acquisition and its effects on reading and writing ability. A total of 74 primary school children (M-age = 7.04 years) participated in the research. They were divided into groups: experimental, which carried out the enhancement, and control groups, which carried out the typical school program. The results show that children who carried out the enhancement obtained higher scores in reading skills, specifically in reading accuracy and text comprehension and spelling accuracy, in comparison with their peers in the control group. These results suggest that strengthening the lexical semantic pathway, as theorized by Coltheart's two-way model, can lead to improved reading comprehension and diminished reading errors and spelling inaccuracies.

Factors in cognitive processing of Japanese loanwords by advanced Chinese Japanese-as-a-foreign-language learners.

Previous studies have highlighted the challenges faced by Chinese Japanese-as-a-foreign-language (JFL) learners (whose L2 is English) in acquiring L3 Japanese loanwords. These challenges arise from the linguistic characteristics of loanwords and the limited emphasis on teaching and learning them. However, there is a lack of research on the specific factors that influence the processing of Japanese loanwords among Chinese JFL learners. Significant motivation exists, therefore, to investigate these influencing factors as they provide valuable insight into the integration of phonographic and ideographic language systems, ultimately facilitating future lexical acquisition. In this study, an experiment was conducted on 31 Chinese JFL learners to investigate the effects of loanword familiarity, English vocabulary proficiency, English-Japanese phonological similarity, and context on the processing of Japanese loanwords. Data analysis, using a (generalized) linear mixed-effect model, provided the following insights: (1) the processing of Japanese loanwords is influenced by English-Japanese phonological similarity, loanword familiarity, context, and learner English proficiency. Among these four factors, familiarity has the most significant impact on Japanese loanword processing; (2) the effects of context and phonological similarity on the processing of Japanese loanwords are not consistently positive. As learners improve their proficiency in L3 Japanese, they tend to decrease their reliance on English knowledge and instead access loanword representations directly to conceptual representations. Based on the findings of this study, a processing model for Japanese loanwords among advanced Chinese JFL learners is proposed. The model emphasizes the critical importance of the characteristics of loanwords, including phonological similarity and familiarity. It is necessary to determine the specific circumstances in which context considerably enhances learner processing ability.

How Second Language Learners from Mars and Venus Are Different in Lexical Acquisition

Up to the present day the issue of gender and language has been widely studied by numerous researchers not only by linguistics but also practitioners from other fields of study. The amount of research has been done through different methods, instrument and scope. These various approaches have brought contradictory answers of the questions - is there any effect of gender on the language acquisition? If so, to what extent gender demonstrates its influence on language learning? More specifically, does gender difference demonstrate different lexical acquisition of second language learners? Does gender solely affect second language learners lexical acquisition? Burning questions come up along with the various perspectives and paradigm held by practitioners. The complexity brings the impossibility to cover all of questions in one study. Therefore, this study is intended to contribute to sum up studies done in the field of how gender difference demonstrate its effects on second language learners lexical acquisition. By thematical approach, this library research presents a few studies related to gender lexical acquisition that have been available over the last twenty years. The contradictory findings are revealed, that is differences do exist with huge varieties in terms of lexical acquisition, vocabulary, learning strategy and lexical use. Yet, complex measurement of gender effect on lexical acquisition occurs as the effect of the potential existence of other variable factors. Some researchers believe that gender does not solely influence second language learners acquisition. They assume that various findings might be affected by some other variable factors that make male become male and make female become female or make language learners lost their gender identity or home whether they are from Mars or Venus in language acquisition. These variable factors include age, biological, social (context, experience & socialization), psychological, pedagogical (teaching & learning instruction) and linguistical (L1 & L2 relation)