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

双语词汇是语言特异性还是语言非特异性是双语研究的基本问题之一。在双语词汇识别方面，对双语心理词汇的解释有两个方面，即单独词汇中的语言选择性获取和综合词汇中的语言非选择性获取。双语选择性获取与非选择性获取的研究已经开展了各种研究，这些研究使用了操纵两种语言中单词的正字法、音系和语义相似性的策略，特别是两种语言中单词的正字法和语义共享（即同源词），两种语言中单词的正字法共享但没有意义（即语间同音异义词），以及跨语言正字法和音系相邻词。与对照词相比，许多支持双语共同激活的研究都证明了同源词的促进作用和语际同音异义词的干扰作用。同源词识别过程中的促进效应通常是由于同源词的L1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，与非同源控制词相比，加速了同源词的加工。在以往的研究中，同源词/外来词的促进作用在同文字双语者在孤立语境和句子语境中加工同源词，以及在不同文字双语者在脱离句子语境加工同源词之间得到了广泛的探讨。虽然已有不同文字双语者跨语言词汇促进的研究，但涉及的语言对均为字母语言，如日语-英语和韩语-英语。本研究旨在探讨不同文字双语者（即汉英双语者）对外来词的促进作用。具体地说，将包括三个实验，利用双语视觉词识别范式、联合行为方法和眼动追踪测量来监测中英双语者在孤立条件下（实验1）和在句子环境下（实验2）的外来词处理表现。此外，还将包括词频（实验3）和二语熟练程度（实验3），以探讨这些因素是否以及如何相互作用和调节双语词汇获取。该项目属于心理语言学的一个研究领域，它解释了双语词汇获取，即双语者在语言理解过程中如何获取和处理第一语言（L1）和第二语言（L2）的词汇。就研究意义而言，首先，本项目是将母语为语域（如汉语）、第二语言为字母域（如英语）的不同文字双语者纳入双语词汇获取研究的初步探索性尝试。其次，本研究可为外来词的促进作用以及句子语境、词频和二语熟练程度的调节作用的研究结果的推广做出理论和原创性贡献。第三，本研究结果可能有助于探讨BIA+模型等双语认知模型的意义。假设a)无论任务条件（孤立情境和句子情境）如何，外来词促进效应在视觉词识别范式中都是显著的；B)低约束句的促进效应更大；c)相对于频率较低的外来词，频率较高的外来词，尤其是母语外来词，通常会引起更快的反应潜伏期，并且汉语优势汉英双语者的促进作用更为显著。

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.