Bilingual Access to Loanwords among Different-script Bilinguals: Effects of Sentence Context, Word Frequency and Proficiency

双语词汇是特定于语言的还是非特定于语言的，这是双语研究的基本问题之一。关于双语词汇识别，双语心理词典有两个方面的解释，即在单独词典中的语言选择性通达和在综合词典中的语言非选择性通达。对双语选择性通达与非选择性通达的研究一直采用操纵两种语言词汇的正字法、语音和语义相似性的策略，特别是两种语言中既有正字法又有语义的词(即同源词)，在两种语言中有正字法但没有意义的词(即语际同形异形词)，以及跨语言的正字法和音系词邻居。与对照词相比，许多支持双语共激活的研究已经为同源词的易化效应和语际同形词的干扰效应提供了证据。同源词识别中的易化效应通常是由于同源词的母语词汇表征被激活，在一定程度上被映射到相同的语义表征上，从而加快了同源词的加工速度。在以往的研究中，同源词/外来词的易化效应在同一脚本双语者中得到了广泛的讨论，他们在孤立地处理同源词和在句子语境中处理同源词，以及在不同脚本双语者中只在句子语境外加工同源词。虽然已经有关于不同语言双语者之间的跨语言词汇促进的研究，但所涉及的语言对都是字母语言，如日语-英语和韩语-英语。本研究旨在探讨外来词在不同语言双语者(即汉英双语者)中的促进作用。更具体地说，将包括三个实验，利用双语视觉单词识别范式、联合行为方法和眼动测量来监控中英双语者在孤立的无语境条件下(实验1)和在句子语境中(实验2)处理外来词时的表现。此外，词频(实验3)和二语熟练程度(实验3)也将被包括在内，以调查这些因素是否以及如何相互作用和调节双语词汇通达。本研究属于心理语言学学科的一个研究领域，该学科解释双语词汇通达，即双语者在语言理解过程中如何通达和处理第一语言(L1)和第二语言(L2)的词汇。就研究意义而言，首先，本项目是一次初步的探索性尝试，旨在让母语为标志语言(如汉语)、第二语言为字母(如英语)的不同语言双语者参与双语词汇通达研究。其次，本研究可能为外来词的易化效应以及句子语境、词频和二语水平的调节效应的研究成果的推广做出理论和原创性的贡献。第三，本研究的结果可能有助于探讨BIA+模型对双语认知模型的启示。假设a)外来词在视觉词汇识别范式中具有显著的易化效应，而不受任务条件的影响(孤立句和句子语境)；b)外来词的易化效应在低限制句中更大；c)较高的外来词频率，尤其是在L1中，外来词的反应潜伏期一般比频率较低的外来词更快，对于以汉语为主的汉英双语者来说，外来词的易化效应更显著。

Whether bilingual lexicon is language-specific or language-nonspecific is one of the fundamental questions in bilingualism. With regard to bilingual word recognition, there are two aspects interpreting bilingual mental lexicon, namely, language selective access in separate lexicons versus language nonselective access in an integrated lexicon. The investigation into bilingual selective versus nonselective access has been conducted invarious studies that used strategy of manipulating the orthographic, phonological and semantic similarity of words from two languages, particularly words sharing both orthography and semantics in two languages (i.e. cognates), words sharing orthography but not meaning in two languages (i.e. interlingual homographs), and cross-language orthographic and phonological word neighbors. Many studies favoring bilingual co-activation have provided evidence for a facilitation effect of cognates and an interference effect of interlingual homographs, compared to control words. The facilitation effect during cognate recognition is commonly due to the activation of L1 lexical representation of the cognate which, to a certain extent, is mapped onto the same semantic representation and speeds up the processing of cognates compared to non-cognate control words.Among previous studies, the facilitation effect of cognates/loanwords has been widely discussed among same-script bilinguals who process cognates in isolation and in sentence contexts, as well as among different-script bilinguals who process cognates out of sentence context only. Though there have been studies on cross-linguistic lexical facilitation among different-script bilinguals, the language pairs involved were all alphabetic languages such as Japanese-English and Korean-English. The present project aims to investigate the facilitation effect of loanwords among different-script bilinguals (i.e. Chinese-English bilinguals). More specifically, three experiments, with capitalizing on bilingual visual word recognition paradigms and joint behavioral methods and eye-tracking measurement, will be included to monitor Chinese-English bilinguals' performance during loanwords processing in an isolated condition without context (Experiment 1) versus in a sentence context (Experiment 2). Moreover, word frequency (Experiment 3) and L2 proficiency (Experiment 3) will also be included to investigate whether and how these factors interact and modulate bilingual lexical access.The proposed project falls into a study area in the discipline of psycholinguistics that interprets bilingual lexical access, i.e., how bilinguals access and process the lexicon of a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) during language comprehension. With respect to the research significance, firstly, the project is an initial and exploratory attempt to involve different-script bilinguals whose native language is logographic (e.g. Chinese) and second language is alphabetic (e.g. English) in studies on bilingual lexical access. Secondly, this project might make theoretical and original contribution to the generalization of findings concerning the facilitation effect of loanwords and the modulation effect of sentence context, word frequency, and L2 proficiency. Thirdly, the results of the project might be helpful to discuss the implications for bilingual cognition models such as BIA+ model.It is hypothesized that a) loanwords facilitation effect would be significant in the visual word recognition paradigm regardless of task conditions (in isolation vs. in sentence context); b) facilitation effect would be greater in low-constraint sentences; c) higher loanword frequency, especially in L1, would generally elicit faster response latency compared to loanwords with lower frequency, and there would be more significant facilitation effect for Chinese dominant Chinese-English bilinguals.