Cross-lingual transfer effects between English and Italian cognates and noncognates

Two experiments were implemented to examine the proposition that transfer effects between English and Italian translations are restricted to words from the same lexical paradigm. The experiments involved standard repetition priming, a traditional laboratory procedure, and a comparative analysis of the impact of high frequency and low frequency words in one language on performance in an alternative language. The two procedures supported the same conclusion, and showed that transfer effects are restricted to morphologically related words, and that, for the subjects used in our experiments, transfer was asymmetric, involving facilitation for second language words only. The results are discussed with reference to functional accounts of the mental lexicon.

[1]  Joan L. Bybee,et al.  Regular morphology and the lexicon. , 1995 .

[2]  Bert Weltens,et al.  The bilingual lexicon: Modality effects in processing , 1995 .

[3]  Kim Kirsner,et al.  Skill acquisition and repetition priming: One principle, many processes , 1996 .

[4]  G. H. Matthews,et al.  Repetition of Lexicalization across Languages: A Further Test of the Locus of Priming , 1992, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[5]  Lexical aspects of standard dialect bilingualism , 1994, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[6]  Don L. Scarborough,et al.  Frequency and Repetition Effects in Lexical Memory. , 1977 .

[7]  H. Kucera,et al.  Computational analysis of present-day American English , 1967 .

[8]  Kim Kirsner,et al.  Bilingual Lexical Representation: The Status of Spanish-English Cognates , 1986 .

[9]  Frank G. Banta.  Teaching German Vocabulary: The Use of English Cognates and Common Loan Words , 1981 .

[10]  Alphonse G. Juilland,et al.  Frequency Dictionary of Italian Words , 1973 .

[11]  A. D. Groot,et al.  Lexical representation of cognates and noncognates in compound bilinguals , 1991 .

[12]  Dominiek Sandra,et al.  The morphology of the mental lexicon: Internal word structure viewed from a psycholinguistic perspective , 1994 .

[13]  Marcus Taft,et al.  Lexical access-via an orthographic code: The basic orthographic syllabic structure (BOSS) , 1979 .

[14]  M. Potter,et al.  Lexical and conceptual representation in beginning and proficient bilinguals , 1984 .

[15]  Joan L. Bybee.  Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form , 1985 .

[16]  K. Forster,et al.  REPETITION PRIMING AND FREQUENCY ATTENUATION IN LEXICAL ACCESS , 1984 .