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THE CROSS-LANGUAGE ACTIVATION OF FIRST LANGUAGE (L1) HOMONYMS IN SECOND LANGUAGE (L2) PROCESSING AN INVESTIGATION OF WHETHER L1 HOMONYMS ARE ACTIVATED IN L2 SENTENCE CONTEXT
Poster Session A, Friday, September 12, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm, Field House
Mona Alsalmi1, Nan Jiang2; 1Myrland college park university
The 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 specific 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 will contain 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 of 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 unrelated 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 unrelated condition. This study supports the potential automatic activation of L1 translations when processing sentences in L2, even in relatively highly proficient learners and suggests evidence for the verification model in L2 word recognition
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Syntax and Combinatorial Semantics