Bilingual Semantics: Intra- and inter-sense mapping in the case of two languages

Abstract

Despite large strides in our understanding of bilingual language processing at the lexical and syntactic level, including activation in L1/L2 and co-activation of languages (RHM, Kroll and Stewart, 1994; BIA - Dijkstra & Van Heuven & Grainger, 1998; BIA+, Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002), relatively little is known about the structure and activation of bilingual semantics. Current models provide at best a sketchy account of how the two languages compare and potentially interact at the level of meaning (The Sense Model, Finkbeiner et al, 2004; The distributed Feature Model, de Groot, 1992), and it is imperative that more empirical work is done to ascertain a more detailed picture of bilingual semantics (Multilink, Dijkstra et al, 2018). The empirical work presented in this thesis therefore aims to examine whether stronger conceptual links in the L1 afford less processing effort to achieve intra-sense conceptual mapping than in L2 (Part 1), and whether the bilingual inter-sense mapping includes co-activations of meaning (Part 2). Crucially, we use sentence processing throughout in a bid to provide an account of bilingual semantics beyond the lexical level.

Date of Award	23 Feb 2021
Original language	Multiple languages
Awarding Institution	Bangor University
Supervisor	Manon Jones (Supervisor) & Awel Vaughan-Evans (Supervisor)