Journal
QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
Volume 66, Issue 5, Pages 843-863Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2012.720994
Keywords
Bilingualism; Word frequency; Proficiency; Lexical quality; Quantitative analysis
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We investigate the origin of differences in the word frequency effect between native speakers and second-language speakers. In a large-scale analysis of English word identification times we find that group-level differences are fully accounted for by the individual language proficiency scores. Furthermore, exactly the same quantitative relation between word frequency and proficiency is found for monolinguals and three different bilingual populations (DutchEnglish, FrenchEnglish, and GermanEnglish). We conclude that the larger frequency effects for second-language processing than for native-language processing can be explained by within-language characteristics and thus need not be the consequence of being bilingual (i.e., a qualitative difference). More specifically, we argue that language proficiency increases lexical entrenchment, which leads to a reduced frequency effect, irrespective of bilingualism, language dominance, and language similarity.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available