Lexical Representations Research Articles

Lexical pathway from L2 to L1 activation in intermediate proficient bilinguals: behavioral and ERP evidence.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that second language (L2) comprehension is often accompanied by activations in the first language (L1). Using both behavioral measurement and event-related potential (ERP), this study conducted two experiments to investigate whether a direct activation pathway exists from L2 lexical representation to L1 lexical representation (the lexical pathway) in intermediate proficient bilinguals. In Experiment 1, we designed a vowel letter search task on English word pairs, which enables bilinguals to prevent semantic priming in the first 300 ms processing stage after the words' onset. In Experiment 2, Mandarin-English bilinguals were recruited to complete this task on English word pairs with occasional first character repetition between the Chinese counterparts of a word pair. Results showed a significant main effect within both the P200 and N400 time windows, indicating the activation of bilinguals' L1 lexical representation during these intervals. However, the main effect of semantic relatedness was only significant in the N400 time window. These results suggest that bilinguals can activate their L1 lexical representation directly before engaging in conceptual representation. This finding supported a lexical pathway of activation from L2 lexical representation to L1 lexical representation during visual-word recognition in intermediate proficient bilinguals.

Hubungan Antara Short Term Memory dengan Kemampuan Sintaksis pada Anak Prasekolah Usia 3-5 Tahun di TK IV dan KB IV Saraswati Denpasar

Abstract Background: Short term memory is a memory that is responsible for holding and processing relevant information and at the same time, this will activate the repository language of lexical representations in long term memory. Syntax is an aspect of language that refers to grammatical rules, i.e., how words are combined into phrases and sentences correctly in grammar (White et al., 2017). Objectives: This study aims to determine the relationship between short term memory and the syntactic ability in preschool children aged 3-5 years at Kindergarten IV and Play Group IV Saraswati Denpasar. Methods: This research uses a quantitative method, an observational approach with a cross sectional study design. The population in this study were children 3-5 years old in Kindergarten IV and Play Group IV Saraswati Denpasar. The sampling technique used purposive sampling by taking 37 samples of children. Results: The results of the Spearman rank test show that short term memory ability and syntactic ability have a significance of 0.000 (ρ < 0.05) so that the alternative hypothesis (Ha) is accepted. The correlation test value (r) shows a figure of 0.938 and shows a positive correlation. Conclusion: There is a relationship between short term memory and the syntactic abilities of preschool children aged 3-5 years at Kindergarten IV and Play Group IV Saraswati Denpasar. Keywords: Short Term Memory, Syntax, Syntactic, Preschool Cognitive, Language

Becoming word meaning experts: Infants' processing of familiar words in the context of typical and atypical exemplars.

How do infants become word meaning experts? This registered report investigated the structure of infants' early lexical representations by manipulating the typicality of exemplars from familiar animal categories. 14- to 18-month-old infants (N = 84; 51 female; M = 15.7 months; race/ethnicity: 64% White, 8% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% Black, and 23% multiple categories; participating 2022-2023) were tested on their ability to recognize typical and atypical category exemplars after hearing familiar basic-level category labels. Infants robustly recognized both typical (d = 0.79, 95% CI [0.54, 1.03]) and atypical (d = 0.70, 95% CI [0.46, 0.94]) exemplars, with no significant difference between typicality conditions (d = 0.14, 95% CI [-0.08, 0.35]). These results support a broad-to-narrow account of infants' early word meanings. Implications for the role of experience in the development of lexical knowledge are discussed.

Dialect Recognition via Lexical Processing: Is It a Viable Litmus Test?

For decades, linguists have been working to formulate an objective means of distinguishing dialects from languages, but dialect recognition has largely remained a subjective enterprise. Only recently have some studies proposed a processing-based psycholinguistic approach toward dialect recognition. These studies argued that dialect words are stored as a co-dependent representation, not as an independent representation of the words of bilingual speakers. Based on these studies, we investigated the lexical selection and processing mechanisms of bilingual and bidialectal speakers of two understudied languages, Oromo and Amharic, using the picture–word interference paradigm. We found independent lexical representations for both the bilingual and the bidialectal groups, which implies the involvement of the same cognitive mechanisms in both language and dialect processing. Thus, we argue that bidialectal speakers have flexible lexical representation and selection mechanisms that are dependent on the speakers’ previous language experience. Here, we propose a dynamic lexical selection model that accommodates diverse dialect ecologies.

Polysemies and the one representation hypothesis

Abstract Polysemy has attracted much interdisciplinary interest in recent times. Recent discussions in psycholinguistics focus on the different processing profiles of polysemous and homonymous words, and on how to explain such different profiles. Much current research assumes that while homonymous meanings are stored in different lexical entries in the mental lexicon, polysemous senses relate to just one lexical representation, be this a list of senses or a core meaning formed by features common to all the different senses. However, there is growing skepticism towards such a one-representation hypothesis. After differentiating regular and irregular polysemies along several dimensions (not only in terms of sense representation, but also in terms of sources, acquisition and word class distribution), this paper argues that the variants of the one representation model can meet some of the challenges that have been raised. However, there are further challenges that have not yet been considered. On the one hand, nested polysemies (senses generated on the basis of iterations of metonymies or metaphors) put some pressure on the idea that senses of irregular polysemies share some set of features. On the other hand, sharing some features that could constitute a core meaning may not be sufficient for entering in co-activation patterns. In sum, while the paper defends the one-representation hypothesis in the light of recent skepticism, it also calls for further research and an eventual reformulation of the hypothesis.

Inflection class interactions and valency changes in Matlatzinca

Abstract In this paper, we explore how changes in the inflection class membership of verbs in Matlatzinca (Oto-Pamean, Oto-Manguean, Mexico) lead to changes in both their valency and meaning. In Matlatzinca, verbs often exhibit multiple class membership so that a given verb may be inflected as transitive in one class but as intransitive in another. For instance, the verb chun+ta, when inflected in different classes, can encompass diverse meanings: the action of ‘waking someone up’; the result state of ‘being awake’; and the spontaneous event of ‘waking up’. This linguistic phenomenon is intriguing from both a typological and a theoretical perspective as it challenges our understanding of lexical representation by prompting the question of whether these meanings represent distinct lexical entries or various construals of the same verb (Spencer 2013).

Lexical and semantic features of the verbalization of the Russian concept of «Fate–Promysel» in diachrony

The subject of the study – the concept «Fate–Promysel» and its lexical-semantic field in diachrony. The relevance is due to the key position of the idea of fate in Russian culture, the frequency of use of verbalizers of the concept. The concept is analyzed from the point of view of its lexical and semantic representation in different eras: the period of the spread of Old Church Slavonic writing – modern times. The purpose of the article is to determine the original semantic parts of the main verbalizers of the concept, study their constancy and changeability in diachrony. The methods of semantic analysis and of semantic experiment were used. Conclusions: 1) the main semantic parts of the concept in the Old Church Slavonic / Church Slavonic languages are designated as primordial, 2) changes in verbalizers and their meanings are traced: the predominance of verbalizers with the semes «random», «share», «fate» in the 19th century, the disappearance of the verbalizer «providence» and the rarity of fixation in the semantic field of dictionary definitions of the meaning «care of God about man» in the 20th century, 3) the semantic experiment made it possible to determine that the verbalizer «fate» is fixed by the participants mainly in the meaning of «destiny», while the idea of the randomness of events, their independence from the will of a person is inferior among modern native speakers to the understanding of fate as a set of cause-and-effect relationships, personal choices and influence of external circumstances that can be predicted and influenced by humans. There is a significant semantic shift in the lexical-semantic field of the concept «Fate–Promysel» from the main seme «Divine care for man» to the seme «coincidence of circumstances» (controlled or not by a person).

Neural representation of phonological wordform in temporal cortex.

While the neural bases of the earliest stages of speech categorization have been widely explored using neural decoding methods, there is still a lack of consensus on questions as basic as how wordforms are represented and in what way this word-level representation influences downstream processing in the brain. Isolating and localizing the neural representations of wordform is challenging because spoken words activate a variety of representations (e.g., segmental, semantic, articulatory) in addition to form-based representations. We addressed these challenges through a novel integrated neural decoding and effective connectivity design using region of interest (ROI)-based, source-reconstructed magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography (MEG/EEG) data collected during a lexical decision task. To identify wordform representations, we trained classifiers on words and nonwords from different phonological neighborhoods and then tested the classifiers' ability to discriminate between untrained target words that overlapped phonologically with the trained items. Training with word neighbors supported significantly better decoding than training with nonword neighbors in the period immediately following target presentation. Decoding regions included mostly right hemisphere regions in the posterior temporal lobe implicated in phonetic and lexical representation. Additionally, neighbors that aligned with target word beginnings (critical for word recognition) supported decoding, but equivalent phonological overlap with word codas did not, suggesting lexical mediation. Effective connectivity analyses showed a rich pattern of interaction between ROIs that support decoding based on training with lexical neighbors, especially driven by right posterior middle temporal gyrus. Collectively, these results evidence functional representation of wordforms in temporal lobes isolated from phonemic or semantic representations.

Lexical representation of the notion coffee in present-day English (on the material of lexicographical sources)

The article is devoted to the study of the lexicon that represents the notion of coffee in present-day English. The novelty of the research is that the corresponding lexical units were established, analysed, and then distributed in groups, with their semantic connections revealed and described. It is quite topical as a great number of modern philology studies focus now on those lexical domains that verbalize various fragments of material and spiritual life of an ethnic community. Thus, in this work, the thematic criterion of stratification of the part of English vocabulary that denotes coffee was applied. The borrowed nature of the lexeme coffee was revealed. The polysemous lexeme possesses a six-component structure, the basic lexico-semantic variant of which fixes the idea of a drink and is characterized by the double axiology of its connotation. It was established that the other meanings were formed as a result of a metonymic shift. We demonstrated that the unit coffee is a core of the lexicon "coffee" with nine thematic groups, further differentiated into thematic subgroups, lexical-semantic groups and synonymic rows. The stylistic classification of the vocabulary was also carried out. The identified groups reflect the components (or their combination) of the notion of coffee, which was initially modelled on the basis of the study of the meaning of the lexeme coffee and finally expanded in the course of further analysis of the lexical fragment.

Testing mechanisms underlying children's reading development: The power of learning lexical representations.

Prominent theories of reading development have separately emphasized the relevance of children's skill in learning (Share, 2008) and lexical representations (Perfetti & Hart, 2002). Integrating these ideas, we examined whether skill in learning lexical representations is a mechanism that might explain children's reading development. To do so we conducted a longitudinal study, following 139 children from Grades 3 to 5. In Grade 3, children completed measures of word reading and reading comprehension and again at Grade 5. In Grade 4, children read short stories containing novel words; they were later tested on their memory for the spellings and meanings of these new words, capturing orthographic and semantic learning, respectively. Using multiple-mediation path analysis, we tested whether children's skill in learning orthographic and semantic dimensions of new words was a mediator of individual differences in each of word reading and reading comprehension. In models controlling for nonverbal ability, working memory, vocabulary, and phonological awareness, we found two clear effects: individual differences in orthographic learning at Grade 4 mediated the gains that children made in word reading between Grades 3 and 5 and individual differences in semantic learning at Grade 4 mediated gains in reading comprehension over the same time period. These findings suggest that children's ability to learn lexical representations is a mechanism in reading development, with orthographic effects on word reading and semantic effects on reading comprehension. These findings show the power and the specificity of children's capacity to learn in determining their progress in learning to read. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Morphosyntactic underspecification affects the processing of verbal forms at different levels of abstraction in L1 and L2 German

Abstract Using a priming paradigm, we investigated the processing of overtly identical verb forms with different sets of morphosyntactic features in L1 and L2 German. We found that more specific functions of a verb (inflected verbs) were better primes for less specific verb functions (past participles) than vice versa. For L1 speakers, these priming asymmetries were observed regardless of whether the lexical verb was repeated in prime and target or not (i.e., priming also for abstract configurations). For L2 learners, a similar but not native-like asymmetric priming pattern was seen only with repetition of the lexical verb. It was absent when the verb was not repeated. We conclude that in L2, morphosyntactic information is processed more on a lexical, item-based level compared to L1. We discuss our results in the context of several accounts, e.g., Shallow Structure Hypothesis, Declarative Procedural Model and the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation.

Repeated naming affects the accessibility of nonselected words: Evidence from picture-word interference experiments.

This study traced different types of distractor effects in the picture-word interference (PWI) task across repeated naming. Starting point was a PWI study by Kurtz et al. (2018). It reported that naming a picture (e.g., of a duck) was slowed down by a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative picture name from a different taxonomic level ("birch" related to "bird") when compared to an unrelated control, indicating that the alternative name was (phonologically) coactivated. Importantly, the effect was stable across repeated naming. The authors argued that this stability challenges adaptive models of word production according to which coactivated but nonselected words become less accessible for future retrieval; such a change in lexical accessibility should have been reflected in reduced interference. Using a similar experimental protocol as Kurtz et al., our study looked at the stability of different distractor effects in PWI. Interference from a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative name was stable across repeated naming, replicating Kurtz et al. In contrast, interference from a distractor word denoting a semantic category coordinate ("stork") was reduced across repeated naming. A similar pattern was found for a distractor word corresponding to an alternative name ("bird"). Facilitation from a distractor word phonologically related to the target name ("dust"), in contrast, was stable across repeated naming. We discuss the implications of these findings with respect to the issue of changes in the accessibility of lexical representations, the use of the PWI task in this context, and the use of this task in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Constructional sources of durational shortening in discourse markers

Abstract Using naturally occurring data from Spanish from Madrid, this study is the first to analyze durations of the Spanish word decir ‘to say, to tell’ both as a verb with prepositional meaning and as part of the reformulating construction [es decir] ‘that is to say’ (N = 388). We show that, although it is neither highly grammaticalized nor frequent, [es decir] undergoes phonological reduction to a significantly greater degree than the more frequent lexical source decir ‘to say’. Results of linear mixed-effects models predicting target duration suggest these durational differences cannot be explained due to conditioning factors of the target context controlled in this analysis (speech rate of the target word context, predictability of following words, number of phones, distance from pause). They do not appear to stem from an accumulation in memory of patterns of likelihood of use in those conditioning environments. We propose that [es decir] is stored as a lexical unit that contains as part of the lexical representation shorter word durations relative to the lexical form decir and that this durational shortening is part of the [reformulator] construction.

Flexible margins and multiple samples learning to enhance lexical semantic similarity

The advancement of deep learning and neural networks has led to the widespread adoption of neural word embeddings as a prominent lexical representation method in natural language processing. With the help of the neural language model trained by the contextual information of large scale text, the neural word embedding obtained by the neural language model captures more semantic correlation in the semantic space, while ignoring the semantic similarity. It will incur high computational cost and time costs during the training process of the model. To better inject semantic similarity into the distribution space and reduce time cost, we perform post processing learning of neural word embeddings using deep metric learning. This paper proposes a lexical enhancement method based on flexible margins and multiple samples learning. In this method, we embed the lexical entailment constraint relations into neural word embeddings. By categorizing the set of lexical constraints and penalizing the negative samples to different degrees according to the gap between categories, and allowing the positive and negative samples to learn from each other in the distributed space. The method we propose significantly improves neural word embeddings. By evaluating neural word embedded vocabulary similarity, the benchmark accuracy is improved to 75%. The method shows great competitiveness in text similarity tasks and text categorization tasks. These findings summarize research results and provide strong support for further applications.

Regular exposure facilitates dual-mapping of Cantonese pronunciation variants

Abstract The multilingual landscape of Canada creates opportunities for many heterogeneous bilingual communities to experience systematic phonetic variation within and across languages and dialects, and exposes listeners to different pronunciation variants. This paper examines phonetic variation through the lens of an ongoing sound change in Cantonese involving word-initial [n] and [l] across two primed lexical decision tasks (Experiment 1: Immediate repetition priming task, Experiment 2: Long-distance repetition priming task). Our main question is: How are sound change pronunciation variants recognized and represented in a Cantonese-English bilingual lexicon? The results of both experiments suggest that [n]- and [l]-initial variants facilitate processing in both short and long-term spoken word recognition. Thus, regular exposure to Cantonese endows bilingual listeners with the perceptual flexibility to dually and gradiently map pronunciation variants to a single lexical representation.

The effect of talker intelligibility on adaptation to an unfamiliar accent

Listening effort, as indexed by task-evoked pupil response, increases as the intelligibility of second language (L2) speech decreases, and this processing cost is mitigated by experience with talkers of the same accent (Porretta and Tucker, 2019). Prior research has shown that listeners can adapt to unfamiliar L2-accented speech and generalize the adaptation to different L2-accented talkers with the same L1 (Bradlow and Bent, 2008). The current study investigates what type of L2-accented speech exposure (high or low intelligibility) best reduces later listening effort to a novel talker of the same accent. We hypothesize that exposure to highly intelligible L2 speech supports adaptation to the features of an accent because it allows listeners to map accented tokens to the talker’s intended lexical representations. Alternatively, adaptation to a less intelligible talker may require exposure to other low-intelligibility speech, which is characterized by features that deviate more significantly from L1 norms. To test this, participants were exposed to simple sentences spoken in English by either L1 talkers, highly intelligible L2 talkers, or less intelligible L2 talkers. At test, all participants listened to different sentences spoken by a previously unheard L2 talker while listening effort was measured via pupillometry. Data collection is ongoing.

Frequency effects can modulate the neural correlates of prosodic processing in Mandarin.

In tonal languages, tone perception involves the processing of both acoustic and phonological information conveyed by tonal signals. In Mandarin, in addition to four canonical full tones, there exists a group of weak syllables known as neutral tones. This study aims to investigate the impact of lexical frequency effects and prosodic information associated with neutral tones on the auditory representation of Mandarin compounds. We initially selected disyllabic compounds as targets, manipulating their lexical frequencies and prosodic structures. Subsequently, these target compounds were embedded into selected sentences and auditorily presented to native speakers. During the experiments, participants engaged in lexical decision tasks while their event-related potentials were recorded. The results showed that the auditory lexical representation of disyllabic compounds was modulated by lexical frequency effects. Rare compounds and compounds with rare first constituents elicited larger N400 effects compared to frequent compounds. Furthermore, neutral tones were found to play a role in the processing, resulting in larger N400 effects. Our findings showed significantly increased amplitudes of the N400 component, suggesting that the processing of rare compounds and compounds with neutral tones may require more cognitive resources. Additionally, we observed an interaction effect between lexical frequency and neutral tones, indicating that they could serve as determining cues in the auditory processing of disyllabic compounds.

Paradigm uniformity effects on French liaison

French liaison is a type of external sandhi involving the use of a special consonant-final allomorph before vowel-initial words. Consonants occurring at the end of these allomorphs are challenging for phonological theory because of evidence that their prosodic and segmental realization is intermediate between the realizations of word-final and word-initial consonants. This puzzling behavior of French liaison has been used to motivate new phonological and lexical representations, including floating consonants, lexical constructions and gradient symbolic representations. This paper proposes an alternative analysis: the variable realization of liaison is derived as a paradigm uniformity effect, assuming traditional phonological and lexical representations. In a Word1-Word2 sequence, the liaison consonant at the boundary between the two words ends up acquiring properties of both word-final and word-initial consonants because of a pressure to make contextual variants of Word1 and Word2 similar to their citation forms. The proposal is implemented in a probabilistic constraint-based grammar including paradigm uniformity constraints and is shown to account for the intermediate behavior of liaison both in terms of prosodic attachment and segmental realization. The paper provides evidence for two key predictions of this analysis, using judgment data on the prosodic attachment of liaison consonants in European French and phonetic data on the interaction between liaison and affrication in Quebec French.

Developing Chinese lexical representations in Korean learner’s mind

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: The present research explores whether Korean learners of Chinese at different proficiency levels employ distinct processing strategies when processing Chinese words with identical or different orthographic representations. Design/methodology/approach: In this research, two experimental studies were carried out to examine how Korean learners with different Chinese language proficiency process orthography, pronunciation, and meanings of Chinese written words. Data and analysis: Reaction times and error rates were analyzed for each study. Revised hierarchical model (RHM) and Ontogenesis Model (OM) are the major models used to analyze and discuss the results. Findings/conclusions: The findings of the phonological task reveal that intermediate-level participants utilize first language mediators to access second language (L2) words, whereas high-level participants can directly activate L2 phonological representations without first language interference. Conversely, in the semantic task, participants from both proficiency levels seem to adopt the word association model regardless of orthographic representations. Originality: The originality of the present study lies in its examination of the processing strategies employed by Korean learners of Chinese at different proficiency levels, specifically when processing Chinese words with identical or different orthographic representations. Significance/implications: These findings suggest that L2 proficiency does not guarantee the elimination of native language influence on L2 lexical processing and various factors can affect L2 lexical processing. To improve L2 lexical learning, it is recommended to start language learning early, increase vocabulary size, and enhance exposure to L2 words.

Strategies of rendering non-verbal components in multimodal constructions comprising nationally-biased lexical units (based on British political video interviews and debates)

This paper presents a comprehensive review of the research exploring non-verbal components observed in modern British political texts across two video genres, particularly focusing on the rendering of nationally-biased units. The emphasis lies on the phenomenon of realization of non-verbal speechcomponents in Ukrainian translations of political discourse texts and the claim that the strategy of rendering significantly depends on the emotional pattern of the presented material, such as interviews and political debates. Each genre of the political discourse has unique parameters for conveying informationto the interlocutor. Since the communicative aim differs in each of the presented genres, an interpreter encounters challenges in grasping the gist of the main idea in the utterance. Notably, non-verbal components of a communicative act are considered as the confounding factor in choosing the appropriate strategy of source language text translation. This article also investigates features of non-verbal communication, aiming to create a novel paradigm for rendering non-verbal components. To achieve this objective, the author analyses videos of two video genres such as interviews and political debates featuring nationallymarked lexicon of Great Britain. The study concludes that the genre-specific nature of multimodal texts is the contributing factor in selecting the suitable strategy for rendering discourse as a semantic unity. Specifically, the author considers two ways of non-verbal lexical units representation including subtitling and stenographic description and suggests “The Code of Subtitling” comprising criteria of subtitles creation, namely: accuracy, timing, length and readability, punctuation and grammar, speaker identification, handling accents and dialects, capturing audience reaction, censorship and sensitivity, font style and size and localisation. It is proved that the use of non-verbal components in multimodal constructions comprising nationally-biased units poses difficulties for translators and interpreters, who are therefore required to possess skills in understanding cultural awareness, empathy and a profound knowledge of both the source and target languages.