Jean-Marc LAVAUR, Xavier APARICIO, Lisa VANDEBERG & Ton DIJKSTRA

International Congress of PsychologyBerlin, Germany, July 2008

How many multilinguals in Europe?

23 official languages in the European Union

L1: dominant language (generally but not always the native language)

L2: English for most countries and speakers (but English could also befound as a L3)

L3: very diverse, depending on different factors (geographical, cultural, institutional, etc.)

Multilingualism and Cognitive Psychology

Important number of researches concerning Bilingualism in Cognitive Psychology

A large part of the researches concern the study of the bilingual mental lexicon

Next step: focus on multilingual communication and lexical processing

The Multilingual Lexicon

The mental lexicon is a part of human memory (Dijkstra, 2005)It contains all kinds of information we know concerning

languages and words:

-orthography-phonology -semantics-syntax-additional information: languages (in multilinguals)

How to access the multilingual lexicon?

Language selective access: organized by language (Gerard & Scarborough, 1989)

LIRE

LIREDIRE French lexicon

FIREHIRE

English lexicon

Language non-selective access: organized by features(Dijkstra, Van Jaarsveld & Ten Brinke, 1998)

LIRE

LIREDIREFIREHIRELIRAARIA

French/English/Spanishshared lexicon

LIRAARIA Spanish lexicon

Model of the architecture of

the multilingual lexiconDifferent units are involved in orthographic processing: BIA+ Model(Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002)

L1/L2/L3

Visual input

Relations between words of different languages

(Lavaur & Font, 1998)

-Strong orthographic and phonological overlap betweenlanguages and words:

Example:

-Weak orthographic and phonological overlap betweenlanguages and words:

Example:

Amour Amor

Meat Carne

Love

Viande

Cognates

Cognates are words for which the orthography, phonology and meaning are similar/identical in different languages(Bogaards, 1994)

Facilitatory or inhibitory effects depending, in part, on the task context.

CLASSE CLASS CLASE

Noncognates

Identical/Similar semantics in the three languages, different orthography and phonology in all the three languages.

Double Cognates

identical/similar semantics in the three languages,identical /similar orthography in only two languages

Triple Cognates

identical / similar semantics and orthography and phonologyin all three languages

Objectives

How does the memory of trilinguals work when the L1 is not explicitely solicited, or the influence is supposed to be limited to one of the two other languages ?

If the L1 has an influence, generalized to all the languages, what consequences on the working of trilingual memory?

Hypothesis 1: Influence or no influence

of the native language

Lexical decision task:If L1 has an influence, cognate words with French in English and/or Spanishwill be recognized faster than words with different forms in these languages(noncognates)

Language decision task:If L1 has an influence, cognate words with French in English and/or Spanishwill be processed more slowly than words with different forms in these languages(noncognates)

Cognate facilitation effect

Cognate inhibition effect

Hypothesis 2:Additional cognate effect

Lexical decision task:words that have the same form in all languages(triple cognates) will be recognized faster thanwords with (partially) different forms (double cognates/noncognates)

Language decision task:words that have the same form in all languages(triple cognates) will be processed more slowly thanwords with (partially) different forms (double cognates/noncognates)

Additional facilitation effect

Additional inhibition effect

*FALDA

Spanish

*SKIRT

English

The participant has to decide as quickly and accurately as possible to which language the word belongs.

Population and material Population: 24 undergraduate trilinguals, native speakers of French, with English as a second language and Spanish as a third language.

Material: 70 French-English-Spanish translation equivalents X 3 language decisions

Specific words

14

Cognates L1-L2

14

Cognates L1-L3

14

Cognates L2-L3

14

Cognates L1-L2-L3

14

Procedure: each participant performs 3 language decision tasks,respectively L1-L2, L1-L3 et L2-L3.

Results: interaction effects between language and category

Specific words are globally processed faster

-Specific words processed faster in L1L2 and L2L3 decisions-No effect in L1L3 decision due to specific patterns between L1 and L3

Results: detailed interaction effects between language and category

Additional cognate effect

Discussion Experiment 1

Language specific words are generally processed better than cognates.

Cognates have an influence on visual word processing.

Native language has an influence on the processing of other languages.

Results supporting a non specific access to the mental lexicon.

*nouse

NO

*money

YES

The participant has to decide as quickly and accurately as possible if the letterstring is an existing word or not.

Method Experiment 2

Population: same participants as in experiment 1

Material: 72 French-English-Spanish translation equivalents:

Procedure: each participant performs the 2 lexical decision tasks,respectively L2 et L3.

Specific words

24

Cognates L1-L2

24

Cognates L1-L2-L3

24

English Lexical Decision

- No standard cognate effect for L1-L2 cognates vs L2 control words

- L1-L2-L3 cognates got a faster response

Spanish Lexical Decision

Cognate effect for French-English-Spanish cognates relative to Spanish control words

Triple cognates were not recognized significantly faster than double cognates.

Discussion Experiment 2a:

English lexical decision In English LD, Cognate effect for L1-L2-L3 cognates

Cognates in 3 languages were recognized faster than

L1-L2 cognates

During recognition of words in a second language, even a third non-native language (L3) exerts an influence on recognition performance.

Discussion Experiment 2b:

Spanish lexical decision Cognate effect for L1-L3 cognates

L1-L2-L3 cognate effect relative to Spanish specific words.

Triple cognates were not recognized significantly faster than double cognates.

General Discussion

Results are supporting a non-selective access to the mental lexicon.

Specific words are processed faster than other kinds of words in Language Decision, and more slowly in Lexical Decision.

Shared patterns between languages have an influence on word visual processing.

Influence of native language on the two other languages’ processing.

Thanks for your attention!

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