Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
Browse
7 results
Search Results
Item THE CROSS-LANGUAGE ACTIVATION OF FIRST LANGUAGE (L1) HOMONYMS TRANSLATIONS IN SECOND LANGUAGE (L2) PROCESSING: AN INVESTIGATION OF WHETHER L1 TRANSLATION ARE ACTIVATED IN L2 SENTENCE CONTEXT(2024) Alsalmi, Mona Othman; Jiang, Nan; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A present study aimed to investigate the role of a first language (L1) translation on a second language (L2) word processing in a sentential context by relatively advanced Arabic learners of English. The focus is on cases where a homonymous word in the L1 is realized by independent words in the L2, (e.g. Arabic قرش realized by English shark and coin). Using the visual-world paradigm, Arabic-English bilinguals and English native participants were auditorily presented with English sentences that are predictive of a target word (e.g., “shark” in Scuba divers saw the sharp teeth of a giant shark yesterday) while looking at a visual screen. The screen contained one of the three critical objects: a target object whose English name corresponded to the target word (shark; Arabic: قرش) in the target condition, an Arabic competitor object whose Arabic name shared the same Arabic translation with the target word (coin; Arabic: قرش) in the Arabic condition, or an object that was unrelated to the target word (drums; Arabic طبل) in the control condition.Compared to native speakers of English, relatively advanced Saudi learners of English made more fixations on the critical objects in the Arabic condition compared to the control condition. This study supports the potential automatic activation of L1 translations when processing sentences in L2, even in relatively proficient learners and suggests evidence for the verification model in L2 word recognition.Item Lexical development and masked orthographic priming in the second language(2022) Park, Kichan; Kira, Gor; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The fuzzy lexical representations (FLR) hypothesis proposes that form encoding of words in a second language (L2) is often fuzzy, and this concerns both phonological and orthographic representations. FLR occur because of difficulties in encoding of L2 word forms as well as insufficient L2 experience. The FLR hypothesis also suggests that fuzzy L2 orthographic representations are the reason for the weak lexical competition for orthographic neighbor prime-target pairs in the L2 that has been observed in previous research (e.g., Jiang, 2021). However, this hypothesis also assumes that as orthographic representations become robust along with learners’ L2 experience, L2 words are eventually able to take part in lexical competition just like first language (L1) words. The current study tests these hypotheses using the individual-differences measures of the quality (orthographic precision) and the quantity (vocabulary size) of orthographic representations. At the same time, this study explores the relationship between sound perception (word and phoneme identification) of nonnative contrasts (e.g., the /l/-/ɹ/ contrast for Korean L2 learners of English), phonolexical encoding, and form facilitation for minimal pairs with these contrasts. A masked priming LDT was employed, in which minimal pairs with a nonnative phonological contrast (e.g., read-LEAD) and minimal pairs without a confusing phonological contrast (e.g., dear-TEAR) were used as the prime and target. Before the experiment, it was predicted that low-proficiency L2 speakers would show significant form facilitation under all prime conditions. On the other hand, medium-proficiency L2 speakers were expected to show evidence of emerging lexical competition (a null priming effect) for prime-target pairs without a difficult phonological contrast (e.g., dear-TEAR), although they would still show form facilitation for minimal pairs with a nonnative phonological contrast (e.g., read-LEAD). The facilitation for the latter pairs was predicted to occur because of less successful orthographic encoding of these pairs caused by fuzzy phonological representations of L2 words with difficult phonological contrasts. It was further expected that high-proficiency L2 speakers would show a nativelike pattern of form priming across all the prime conditions. Thirty L1 speakers and 90 L2 learners of English with a wide range of L2 proficiency were recruited for the experiment. In auditory word and phoneme identification tasks, L2 speakers showed less accurate identification of the /l/-/ɹ/ contrast compared to L1 speakers indicating that they indeed had problems in accurate sound perception and/or phonological categorization of the nonnative contrast as had been predicted. In the masked priming LDT, L1 speakers showed a null priming effect across the prime conditions. L2 speakers showed significant form priming for words with the /l/-/ɹ/ contrast but not for other words without a difficult contrast. When form priming in each L2 participant group was examined separately, low- and medium-proficiency L2 speakers showed significant facilitation for pairs with the /l/-/ɹ/ contrast, but high-proficiency L2 speakers showed a null priming effect for these pairs as L1 speakers did. This finding supports the prediction of the current study. At the same time, the influence of global proficiency, as measured by a cloze test, on the orthographic form priming was statistically non-significant. Furthermore, form facilitation for prime-target pairs without a confusing contrast (e.g., dear-TEAR) was not significant even in low-proficiency L2 participant groups. Through a series of investigations on the relationships between the form priming found in L2 speakers and their performance on individual-differences measures (spelling, vocabulary, word identification and phoneme identification tasks), the present study discovered that form facilitation was significantly modulated by L2 speakers’ orthographic precision (spelling scores). Moreover, it was found that the influence of orthographic precision on the form facilitation was more prominent for words that were more difficult for accurate phonological encoding, and as a consequence, orthographic encoding (i.e., minimal pairs with the /l/-/ɹ/ contrast) than others without a confusing contrast. These findings support the FLR hypothesis which argues for the role of the quality of orthographic representations in lexical competition between orthographic neighbors. The role of vocabulary size (vocabulary scores) was also found for four-letter stimuli indicating that the development of the size of the mental lexicon also affects lexical competition. On the other hand, no modulating role was observed of accurate word or phoneme identification of nonnative contrasts in form priming for minimal pairs with these contrasts. Based on these findings, this study suggests that (1) the orthographic form facilitation discovered at initial stages of L2 lexical development is due to fuzzy L2 orthographic representations. In addition, it claims that (2) as L2 speakers establish a larger and more precise L2 lexicon, L2 words can take part in lexical competition just as L1 words do. It also proposes that (3) the establishment of precise orthographic (or phonological) representations of L2 words with a confusing phonological contrast is more challenging than those without a difficult contrast. (4) Finally, although the observed weak effect of sound perception on form priming seems to indicate no systematic relationship between the development of phonological categorization ability and the form facilitation for these words, the present study contends that it may be premature to draw a conclusion about the role of phonolexical representations involving a nonnative contrast in orthographic representations. Indeed, the results may be due to methodological limitations of the word and phoneme identification tasks as a measure of the quality of phonological representations.Item SELECTIVITY IN LEXICAL ACCESS AMONG BILINGUALS OF ORTHOGRAPHICALLY DISTINCT SCRIPTS AND THE ROLE OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS(2020) Al Thowaini, Buthainah M; Jiang, Nan; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A fundamental inquiry within bilingual processing research addresses the underlying mechanisms of lexical access. Research involving bilinguals of orthographically similar scripts has revealed that cross-language activation is non-selective, which supposedly causes the bilingual brain to regularly manage the activation of two languages. Such continuous management of two languages has led some researchers to argue that the bilingual experience contributes to enhanced executive control. The research on selectivity in lexical access, nevertheless, has overwhelmingly involved bilingual speakers of orthographically similar scripts, with a scarcity of studies involving bilingual speakers of orthographically distinct scripts. Additionally, while active management of both languages is expected for bilinguals, little is known about whether language selectivity is related to individual variation in executive control. Instead, research investigating executive functions (EFs) in relation to bilingual processes has primarily been conducted within the context of switch costs, which has been associated with methodological issues. In light of the issues outlined above, the current study investigated selectivity in lexical access among bilinguals of orthographically distinct scripts and the relationship between the degree of selectivity and EFs (i.e., top-down goal maintenance, interference resolution, and working memory capacity). In addition to adopting an individual differences approach to lexical access, the study manipulated the degree of language task demands (comprehension and production). The study employed alternative non-switch tasks to investigate the relationships between EFs and cross-language activation. One hundred and thirty-eight Arabic-English bilinguals, 25 English native speakers, and 24 Arabic native speakers participated in a phoneme monitoring task and a masked primed lexical decision task involving monolingual materials. Bilingual participants also completed non-verbal visuo-spatial and visual single n-back tasks, as well as an AX-CPT task. The analyses revealed non-selective lexical access in language production but were inconclusive for language comprehension, where participants varied in the degree of selectivity. In addition, the results, although preliminary, demonstrated that top-down goal maintenance partially accounted for some of the variances in the degree of selectivity in language comprehension and production. The results suggest that selectivity is influenced by task-dependent variables as well as individual differences in executive functions.Item Explicit and Implicit Cognitive Aptitudes, L2 Outcome Measures, and Learning of Morphosyntax under an Incidental Condition(2018) Maie, Ryo; DeKeyser, Robert M; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study is the first to combine recent methodological advances to the measurement of explicit and implicit knowledge in an investigation of learning under incidental exposure. Participants were exposed to a semi-artificial language, Japlish, and subsequently tested as to the extent to which they had developed explicit and/or implicit knowledge. Subjective measures of awareness, objective measures of linguistic knowledge, and explicit and implicit cognitive aptitudes were employed to triangulate learning outcomes at two testing sessions. Overall results shed new light on the complexity of explicit and implicit learning under incidental conditions. Both learning types were confirmed in the experiment, but they occurred to a different degree and extent. Furthermore, the study identifies clear discrepancies among the four approaches to measuring explicit and implicit knowledge, with some being rigorous and others tending to underestimate or overestimate. The study calls for future research with more longitudinal and situated analyses of the phenomena.Item AUTOMATIC ACTIVATION OF SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION DURING SECOND LANGUAGE PROCESSING(2015) AHN, SUN YOUNG; JIANG, NAN; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The present study is motivated by two questions. First, can late learners of a second language (L2), who begin learning after puberty and are unbalanced bilinguals, activate or visualize the meaning of an L2 word or sentence as quickly as do first language (L1) speakers? Second, if so, what factors—such as L2 proficiency and the amount of its use—contribute to developing native–like efficient processing in L2? To address these questions, the degrees of automatic semantic activation were compared between L1 and L2 speakers through emotional involvement during word recognition and mental imagery generation during sentential reading. To this end, a total of 60 late–advanced L2 Korean speakers participated in the emotional Stroop Task and the sentence–based picture recognition task along with 36 L1 Korean speakers. The results revealed that the emotional Stroop effect was not statistically significant in the late L2 group but was significant in the L1 group; whereas the sentence–picture congruency effect was significant in both L2 and L1 groups with similar degrees. This means that late L2 Korean speakers could activate sentence meaning during L2 sentential reading as automatically as L1 speakers but could not activate word meaning as efficiently as L1 speakers. Different degrees of semantic activation among the L2 group across experiments compared to L1 speakers can be considered as cross–task variation; that is, L2 speakers exhibited native–like patterns when semantic activation was promoted but did not when constrained in the tasks (in a sentence–based picture recognition task and an emotional Stroop task, respectively). Furthermore, the results showed that the effect of L2 use was positively significant both on the emotional Stroop effect and the sentence–picture congruency effect. These findings suggest that the degree of automatic semantic activation during L2 word recognition, as well as sentence reading can be improved with increased L2 use, despite the late starting age of L2 acquisition. Overall, the present study found positive evidence that late L2 speakers may achieve native–like efficiency in reading comprehension in L2, assisted with the extensive L2 use in addition to high proficiency in L2.Item MECHANISMS UNDERLYING LEXICAL ACCESS IN NATIVE AND SECOND LANGUAGE PROCESSING OF GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT(2013) Romanova, Natalia; Gor, Kira; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Despite considerable evidence suggesting that second language (L2) learners experience difficulties when processing morphosyntactic aspects of L2 in online tasks, the mechanisms underlying these difficulties remain unknown. The aim of this dissertation is to explore possible causes for the difficulties by comparing attentional mechanisms engaged at the early stage of lexical access in native and nonnative language processing. The study utilized a grammatical priming paradigm to examine the manner in which native and L2 speakers of Russian access and integrate morphosyntactic information when processing gender and number agreement that operates between nouns and adjectives within the same noun phrase (e.g., prostoj kozjol "simple-MASC-SG goat-MASC-SG") and between nouns and verbs across phrasal boundaries (e.g., byl kozjol "was-MASC-SG goat-MASC-SG"). While native participants (N=36) invoked both automatic and strategic attentional mechanisms, highly proficient L2 participants (N=36), who had been able to perform at the native-like level in offline tasks, exhibited delayed activation of morphosyntactic information and reliance on strategic mechanisms that operate after lexical access. The finding suggests that L2 difficulties with grammar, that are usually regarded as deficits, may reflect differences in the dynamics of lexical activation. The study also found robust priming effects for both categories and evidence of the Markedness Effect (Akhutina et al, 1999) in both groups of participants: nonnative participants recorded differences in the magnitude of priming between feminines and masculines as well as between singulars and plurals, and native participants showed differential contribution of facilitatory and inhibitory components of priming in response to different genders and numbers. The findings suggest that gender and number may require different processing mechanisms, which, along with salience of morphological markers and agreement structures, may contribute to agreement processing in local dependencies more than syntactic distance.Item Age Differences and Cognitive Aptitudes for Implicit and Explicit Learning in Ultimate Second Language Attainment(2012) Granena, Gisela; Long, Michael H.; Second Language Acquisition and Application; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Very high-level, functional ability in foreign languages is increasingly important in many walks of life. It is also very rare, and likely requires an early start and/or a special aptitude. This study investigated the extent to which aptitude for explicit learning, defined as "analytic ability" and aptitude for implicit learning, defined as "sequence learning ability," are differentially important for long-term L2 achievement in an immersion setting. A group of 20 native speaker (NS) controls and 100 Chinese-Spanish bilinguals with ages of onset 3-6 (n = 50) and > 16 (n = 50) participated in the study. Early L2 learners use the same language learning mechanisms as NSs (but still differ in ultimate success), whereas late L2 learners have been claimed to be fundamentally different from NSs in terms of learning mechanisms (and also differ in ultimate success). A set of six L2 attainment measures reflecting a continuum from automatic to controlled use of language knowledge was administered, as well as a battery of six cognitive tests (four language aptitude subtests, a general intelligence test, and a probabilistic serial reaction time task). Results confirmed the predicted distribution of cognitive abilities into two main types of aptitudes, interpreted as implicit and explicit. Participants could be high in one, high in both, or low in both. Results further revealed that early and late L2 learners with high aptitude for explicit learning outperformed individuals with low aptitude on tasks that allow controlled use of language knowledge. On these tasks, aptitude for implicit learning also had an effect, but among early L2 learners only. In addition, early and late L2 learners with high aptitude for implicit learning showed greater sensitivity towards agreement violations on the language task at the most implicit end of the continuum. Finally, general intelligence only played a role in late L2 learners' attainment on tasks that allow controlled use of knowledge. The study concluded that 1) cognitive aptitudes play a role in both early and late L2 learners, 2) different types of cognitive aptitudes have differential effects on L2 outcomes, and 3) individual differences in implicit learning ability are related to L2 attainment in adults.