Study On Word Association Test Of Chinese-English Bilingual Mental Lexicon

For English learners, it goes without saying that vocabulary is of vital importance.Researches on the organization structure of mental lexicon shall be beneficial to help learnersmaster the rules of vocabulary acquisition better and will further help them improve theefficiency of vocabulary acquisition. In the earlier studies of bilingual mental lexicon, it isgenerally accepted that semantic connection plays a dominant role in Chinese mental lexicon,and words in Chinese mental lexicon have formed a relatively stable semantic network system;while for foreign language mental lexicon, many studies have been conducted, but the natureof the organization structure has not been reached an agreement, and it is necessary to makemore and more researches in this field to test and verify relevant issues.Based on the theoretical analysis of cognitive psychology, psychological linguistics andneuropsychology, and the theoretical guidance of bilingual dual-double structure theoryproposed by Professor Yin Demo, the present thesis adopts written-written word associationtest to probe into the differences in organization structure between Chinese mental lexiconand English mental lexicon of Chinese adult English learners, and makes an attempt to revealthe variation tendency for words in English mental lexicon. The total number of91subjectsparticipates in the empirical study. They are enrolled in business administration major of adulthigher education and in English major of school of foreign languages in Xihua Universityrespectively.The thesis consists of the following seven chapters:Chapter One is the introduction, which mainly covers the research background, purposeand significance of the research and research methods, key terms are defined in this chapter.Chapter Two deals with the literature review, and mainly describes the definition andorganization of mental lexicon, related study on bilingual mental lexicon and current researchstatus of word association test. Chapter Three introduces the structure and function of humanbrain and the central mechanism for language activities, and discusses the neurophysiologicrationale for bilinguals based on the analysis of lateralized dominance of cerebral hemisphereand cortical mechanism for Chinese-English bilingual processing. Chapter Four illustrates thebilingual dual-double structure theory, including the theoretical basis and the basic contents.Chapter Five is the empirical study to investigate the differences in organization modebetween Chinese mental lexicon and English mental lexicon, the relevant tests consist ofEnglish word association test, Chinese word association test and Vocabulary knowledgeproficiency test for English prompt words. Results are analyzed and discussed in Chapter Six,SPSS17.0and Excel2007are utilized to analyze the results of Chinese word association testand English word association test, and the comparative results of response types elicited by prompt words with different vocabulary knowledge proficiency, which are mainly used todiscuss the semantic construction, systematic development of mental lexicon, and the specialpsychological mechanism in information processing of Chinese-English mental lexicon.Chapter Seven summarizes the conclusion of the research and the implications for Englishvocabulary teaching as well as the limitations of the research.Based on the theoretical analysis and the empirical study, the thesis mainly draws to thefollowing conclusions:1) There are differences in the storage and organization between Chinese mental lexiconand English mental lexicon for Chinese adult English learners. Semantic connection playsdominant role in vocabulary knowledge of Chinese mental lexicon, among which relevantsemantic knowledge show a variation tendency to shift from syntagmatic knowledge toparadigmatic knowledge; while English mental lexicon is a mixture of semantic connectionsand non-semantically-related connections including pronunciation, deviation, morphologicalknowledge and other vocabulary knowledge, and the cognition structure and knowledgestructure seems to be developing and improving dynamically.2) There also exists difference in the organization of English mental lexicon betweenChinese English learners with different language proficiency. Although the results indicatethat semantic connection plays dominant role in English mental lexicon for both the twogroups, the semantic network of vocabulary knowledge for the higher level group is relativelymore stable than that for the lower level group.3) Vocabulary knowledge proficiency has an influence on the organization of Englishmental lexicon for English learners from the same group. For unknown or slightly knownwords, response words elicited by these prompt words are mainly words bearing a strongresemblance in pronunciation or form, or belonging to other vocabulary knowledge; formoderately known words or fairly well-known words, the semantic network of vocabularyknowledge has been developed gradually; only if the prompt words are well known, can arelatively stable semantic network be established.