Number of meanings and concreteness: Consequences of ambiguity within and across languages

We examined the effects of concreteness and ambiguity on language processing. In Experiment 1, English–Spanish bilinguals translated words with a single translation. Contrary to past findings, we observed no concrete-word advantage in translation latency. In Experiment 2, English–Spanish bilinguals translated words with one and more than one translation. Words with multiple translations were translated more slowly and showed the typical concrete-word advantage. Words with one translation showed a reversal of the typical concrete-word advantage in latency. Further, concrete words were uninfluenced by ambiguity. In Experiment 3, we explored whether the interaction between concreteness and ambiguity was a general property of the language processing system. Supporting this idea, in a monolingual lexical decision task, we found an interaction between concreteness and number of meanings analogous to the interaction in translation. We discuss the common mechanism that may lead to this interaction in both within and cross-language processing.

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