Lexical organization in bilingual infants

双语婴儿的词汇组织

• 批准号: 402470-2011
• 负责人: ByersHeinlein, Krista
• 金额: $ 2.11万
• 依托单位: Concordia University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2012-01-01 至 2013-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=506537
• 关键词: Lexical; organization; bilingual; infants

To successfully acquire their languages, infants growing up in a bilingual setting must encode input from two different languages simultaneously. My research focuses on how bilingual infants navigate, learn, and represent their two languages, as a window into how early language experience shapes language acquisition. This proposal explores a key component of language acquisition in the second year of life: acquiring a lexicon. Although several studies have investigated word learning in bilingual infants, very little is known about the representational structures underlying bilingual infants' developing lexical and semantic knowledge. The PRIMIR (Processing Rich Information from Multidimensional Interactive Representations) theoretical framework of infant speech perception and word learning (Werker & Curtin, 2005) has recently been extended to bilingual acquisition (Curtin, Byers-Heinlein, & Werker, accepted; Werker, Curtin, & Byers-Heinlein, 2010). This proposal will test several central predictions made by PRIMIR, investigating a) whether the bilinguals' two languages are initially differentiated or are initially conflated, b) whether the structure of bilingual infants' lexicons depends on vocabulary size, c) whether there are differences between bilinguals' dominant and their non-dominant language, d) whether cognate words have a special status in the lexicon, e) whether lexical structure is different for infants whose parents engage in frequent language mixing, and f) whether the structure of the bilingual lexicon is continuous or discontinuous across development. To examine these questions, I propose four sets of studies using an infant looking task in conjunction with eye tracking. This proposal makes a novel methodological contribution by combining approaches from adult psycholinguistic research with infant testing techniques. Beyond advancing theory and methodology in language acquisition and psycholinguistics, this research program also provides an entry into studying applied issues in language policy and education.

为了成功地习得语言，在双语环境中长大的婴儿必须同时对两种不同语言的输入进行编码。我的研究重点是双语婴儿如何导航，学习和代表他们的两种语言，作为一个窗口，了解早期语言经验如何塑造语言习得。这个建议探讨了在生命的第二年语言习得的一个关键组成部分：获得词汇。 虽然一些研究调查了双语婴儿的词汇学习，很少有人知道的表征结构的双语婴儿的词汇和语义知识的发展。PRIMIR（Processing Rich Information from Multidimensional Interactive Representations）婴儿言语感知和单词学习的理论框架（Werker &科廷，2005）最近被扩展到双语习得（科廷，Byers-Heinlein，& Werker，accepted; Werker，科廷，& Byers-Heinlein，2010）。本研究将检验PRIMIR的几个核心预测，调查a）双语者的两种语言最初是有区别的还是合并的，B）双语婴儿的词汇结构是否取决于词汇量，c）双语者的主导语言和非主导语言之间是否存在差异，d）同源词在词汇中是否有特殊地位，e）父母频繁使用混合语言的婴儿的词汇结构是否不同; f）双语词汇的结构在整个发展过程中是连续的还是不连续的。为了研究这些问题，我提出了四组研究，使用婴儿的目光与眼动跟踪任务。这一建议使一个新的方法论的贡献，结合成人心理语言学研究与婴儿测试技术的方法。除了推进语言习得和心理语言学的理论和方法外，该研究计划还提供了研究语言政策和教育中应用问题的入口。