LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 16:9 September 2016
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Lexical Access in Monolingual, Bilingual and
Multilingual Children: A Comparative Study

Deepthi M., Ph.D.Research Fellow
Nataraja N.P., Ph.D.

Abstract

The responsibility of deciding which of the activated lexical item needs to be prioritized for further processing is done by lexical selection mechanism. This uncomplicated mechanism is complicated for bilingual and multilingual populations as they face a cognitive challenge during speech processing and production. That is, the words in all the languages begin to get operative to certain extent and may compete for selection. Perhaps because of this complexity, the process involved in case of bilingual and multilingual group has not gained much attention. Hence the present study was conducted aiming to extend research in this area by examining and comparing the lexical access between monolingual, bilingual and multilingual children using picture naming reaction time experiment. 180 subjects participated in this study within the age range 8.6-9 years i.e., 60 monolinguals, 60 bilinguals and 60 multilinguals. The findings indicated faster availability of L1 in monolinguals suggesting that there is experiential difference seen between the monolingual, bilingual and multilingual children in the process of acquisition and language use and also the role of interference from the competing language in bilinguals and multilingual children.

Keywords: lexical access of children, Monolingual, Bilingual, Multilingual

Introduction

When people acquire new words, they store the newly learnt words in their lexicon for later retrieval. During the language production, the words are retrieved from the speaker’s lexicon that matches to their communication intent. So, while desiring to communicate a specific conception, it is first crucial to retrieve the lexical item that matches the target idea. The mechanism through which this is accomplished is commonly called as lexical selection (Caramazza, 1997; Dell, 1986; Levelt, 1989, 2001; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). There are many lexical representations that start operating because of the spreading activation from the semantic level to the lexical level. Thus, a selection mechanism is compelled. Therefore, through the spreading activation, the corresponding lexical node is also activated along with theactivation of any representation at conceptual level. So in this context, not only the word that correlates with the intended meaning is activated but also the other semantically related words are also activated.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Deepthi M.
Ph.D. Research Fellow, J.S.S. Research Foundation
J.S.S. Institute of Speech and Hearing
M.G. Road
Mysore-570004
Karnataka
India
deepthi.snh@gmail.com

Nataraja N.P., Ph.D.
Director
J.S.S. Intitute of Speech and Hearing
M.G. Road
Mysore-570004
Karnataka
India
npnataraja@gmail.com
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