Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of Within- and Cross-language Ambiguity on Word Learning and Processing

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The majority of people in the world are bilingual, which gives importance to our ability to understand how bilinguals and language learners process semantically-ambiguous words both within and across languages. Cross-language translation ambiguity occurs when a word in one language has more than one translation in another language. Previous research indicates that within- and cross-language ambiguity both affect the learning and processing of words in the first language (L1) and in the second language (L2). However, little research has explored how the similarity in meaning between ambiguous words' meanings affects the acquisition and processing of semantically-ambiguous words and meanings in L1 and L2. Under the direction of Dr. Tokowicz, Chelsea Eddington will examine these issues in three event related potential/behavioral experiments. Experiment 1 will examine how semantic similarity impacts the learning of novel meanings for previously-known unambiguous word forms. Memory and semantic priming tasks will test how semantic similarity between the words' novel and old meanings affects the learning and processing of these words. Experiment 2 will examine how semantic similarity of L2 (German) vocabulary affects the learning and processing of these words using vocabulary tests and a semantic relatedness task. Experiment 3 will examine how learners of German extend meanings from ambiguous English words to German vocabulary words by teaching participants only one translation that corresponds to one meaning of semantically-ambiguous words. Learners' semantic processing of the words will be assessed using a translation-recognition task. The results of this study will provide a better understanding of how monolinguals and L2 learners process and learn semantically-ambiguous words, and will inform models of monolingual and bilingual semantic memory. The project will also support the scientific training of a promising linguistic scholar.