Translation Priming across L1 and L2: The Case of Abstract vs. Concrete Primes

چکیده مقاله

Bilingual memory representation or the way bilinguals restore and retrieve words in their mental lexicon has intrigued
psycholinguists in the past decade. Research on the psycholinguistic elements of bilingualism has increased at a
“dizzying rate” over the years (Kroll & De Groot, 2005). The present study explores how bilinguals share semantic
features of their L1 and L2 using a masked semantic paradigm. Target-prime pairs addressed in the study were cross-
language translation pairs in two different directions from L1 to L2 and vice versa including abstract and concrete words.
All experiments were done using DMDX software for measuring reaction times in lexical decision tasks with non-cognate
prime-target pairs. The results of experiment 1 showed a significant priming effect from L1 to L2 for concrete words. In
the opposite direction, the results of experiment 2 showed a significant priming effect from L2 to L1 for abstract words.
The results suggest that L1 and L2 are represented using a similar lexico-semantic architecture and network. In this
network, L2 words are able to activate semantic information as well as L1 words. This is consistent with models
emphasizing quantitative rather than qualitative differences between L1 and L2 representations.