Collaborative Research: Cross-Language Lexical Interaction

Languages differ in how they carve up the world by their labeling of objects and events. For example, the Chinese word closest to the English word "sofa" includes padded, upholstered seats for one person, while the Chinese word closest to the English word "chair" is limited to unpadded seating made of hard materials, such as wood. How do people learning two languages handle such differences? Do they develop separate ways of connecting words to the world in each language or do they learn a single and unique way that does not fully match monolinguals in either language? In this project, the investigators attempt to understand, within the broader context of language interaction in the bilingual mind, how the pattern of word use in one's first language (L1) can influence that in the second language (L2), how L1 knowledge itself can change as L2 knowledge increases, and how the fluctuating experience and knowledge of one language can create the conditions for language interactions to occur. The project will use both behavioral studies and computational modeling to explore the unique and joint contributions of a set of cognitive variables (age of exposure to each language, proficiency in each, and the type of exposure to each) to bilingual lexical knowledge. As globalization advances, more peopleare becoming bilingual or multilingual. The study of language interaction in individuals has implications for understanding the bilingual person's verbal communication, social integration, and consequent career opportunities and may yield information useful for designing learning interventions to improve language proficiency. The proposed work will integrate research and education across the two collaborative sites (Pennsylvania State University and Lehigh University). The research also involves international collaborations between scientists in the US, Europe, and China. The cross-disciplinary nature of the project should attract students from psychology, linguistics, and cognitive and computational sciences, providing opportunities particularly to students from bilingual and bi-cultural backgrounds.