Lexical access in bilinguals: The case of English-based Spanish calques.
Item
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Title
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Lexical access in bilinguals: The case of English-based Spanish calques.
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Identifier
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AAI9224814
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identifier
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9224814
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Creator
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Garro, Luisa Costa.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Ricardo Otheguy
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Date
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1992
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics | Education, Bilingual and Multicultural
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Abstract
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Bilinguals in a language contact situation tend to acquire new usages for words in their native language (L1). These new features range from code-switching, a clear shift from forms of L1 to forms to L2 (e.g. Le pusiste el filling? 'Did you put the filling?'), through borrowing, where L2 forms are still detectable (e.g. Busco una casa furnida 'I'm looking for a furnished house'), to calquing, a more subtle type of change that involves only L1 forms (e.g. Corrio para gobernador 'He ran for governor', where the original form corrio in Spanish only means 'physically run'). In calquing, the words of L1 are used by contact bilinguals in a manner different from that of monolingual speakers of non-contact varieties. This study investigates the psycholinguistic reality of English-based calques in contact Spanish with a semantic priming task (cross modal naming) that examines underlying changes of lexical representation for calque words in Spanish-English bilinguals. This task is used to determine (a) whether the meanings of calque words are linked to English-origin senses, confirming that its semantic representation is different from that of the same lexical item in the monolingual non-contact speaker, and (b) whether calque words exist as stable lexical items in the speech of bilinguals. Both questions focus on the nature of the change in the lexical organization of contact bilinguals.;Priming words related to calqued senses (correr/eleccion) and standard senses (correr/ejercicio) are compared for bilinguals and non-contact Spanish monolinguals in a reaction time (naming) paradigm. Response time differences between populations revealed that the calqued senses were primed through contact Spanish specific associations, supporting our claim that the lexical organization of bilinguals has changed in their L1. The size of the bilingual priming effects for calque pairs was as large as the one for the non-calque pairs, which confirms the internalization of the new lexical items in the bilingual lexicon. The results on different calque types showed that the lexical access of calques is facilitated by phonological form, but not by semantic transparency. These findings were interpreted as supporting the table look-up model of lexical representation.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
