Resolving Cross-Language Ambiguity: Consequences for Processing and Learning

日常语言中充满了歧义。例如，“树皮”这个词既指树的外部，也指狗发出的声音。另一种歧义涉及近义词，比如几乎可以互换的词‘沙发’和‘沙发’。这些歧义产生了对语言处理的需求，因为这两种选择在语言使用过程中都可能变得活跃，即使只有一种选择与语境相关。一个悬而未决的问题是，在语言理解和产出过程中，歧义是如何解决的，这个问题对双语者来说可能会被放大。这项拟议的研究调查了双语者解决歧义的问题。特别是，这项研究将考察翻译歧义，即一种语言中的一个单词在另一种语言中有多个翻译所导致的翻译歧义。翻译歧义将从语言理解和语言产出两个方面对成年后学习西班牙语的英语母语者进行研究，以具体测试歧义的后果在接受性和产出性语言使用中是否相似。相应地，参与者将通过看到一个单词并将其大声翻译成另一种语言来执行涉及“翻译产生”的任务，并通过看到一对单词并指出它们是否是彼此的翻译来进行“翻译识别”。参与者还将在有和没有支持性句子语境的情况下执行翻译任务，以确定语境在多大程度上有助于解决翻译歧义。将对两种培训范例进行评估，以评估它们在减少与学习翻译歧义单词相关的困难方面的成功。在整个项目中，将关注认知技能(例如工作记忆)的个体差异对翻译歧义造成的干扰的影响。更广泛地说，这项工作调查了成人第二语言的学习和处理。总体目标是改进成人学习第二语言的培训方法。

Everyday language is filled with ambiguities. For example, the word 'bark' means both the outer part of a tree and the sound a dog makes. Another kind of ambiguity involves near-synonyms, such as the nearly interchangeable words 'couch' and 'sofa'. These ambiguities create demands on language processing because both alternatives may become active during language use, even when only one is relevant to the context. One open question is how ambiguity is resolved during language comprehension and production, a problem that is likely to be magnified for bilinguals. The proposed research investigates questions regarding ambiguity resolution by bilinguals. In particular, this research will examine 'translation ambiguity', which results from a word in one language having more than one translation into another language. Translation ambiguity will be examined both with respect to language comprehension and language production in native English speakers who are learning Spanish as adults in order to test specifically whether the consequences of ambiguity are similar in receptive and productive language use. Accordingly, participants will perform tasks involving "translation production" by seeing a word and translating it aloud into the other language and "translation recognition" by seeing a pair of words and indicating if they are translations of each other. Participants will also perform translation tasks with and without supportive sentence context to determine the extent to which context can help resolve translation ambiguity. Two training paradigms will be evaluated to assess their success at reducing the difficulties associated with learning translation-ambiguous words. Throughout the project, attention will be given to the effects of individual differences in cognitive skill (e.g., working memory) on disruptions due to translation ambiguity. More broadly, the work investigates adult second language learning and processing. The overall goal is to improve training methods for second language learning by adults.