Dialysis Of MT And FL "Language-Thinking Bilingual Double Structures" From Chinese Adult English Learners’ English-Chinese Bilingual Mental Lexicon

Mental lexicon has become the commonly concerned subject in the fields of linguistics,psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience in recent years. Mental lexicon, which is alsoknown as internal lexicon or mental dictionary, mainly concerns how is the word knowledgerepresented, stored, organized and accessed in brains as well as the questions about vocabularyability development and other issues. Bilingual mental lexicon, a special area in the research ofmental lexicon, focuses on the study of representation relationship between concepts and formsof bilingual mental lexicon.Based on years of teaching experience and theoretical studies, professor Yin Demo fromSchool of Foreign Languages and Cultures in Xihua University, first puts forward the theoryof “Knowledge (Language)-Cognition (Thinking) Bilingual Double Structures” to describeand explain specific mental processing mechanism of Chinese adult English learners. In theprocess of Chinese adults’ English learning, foreign language knowledge (language)-cognition(thinking) systems are gradually constructed based on mother tongue knowledge(language)-cognition (thinking) systems, these four systems interact and cross with each otherin the process of English learning information processing and knowledge assimilation fromconcepts to semantics, words to sentences and structures to discourses. On this basis, foreignlanguage mental lexicon is gradually derived from mother tongue mental lexicon and constructsits own relative independent information processing system. The independent and interactedforeign language and mother tongue mental lexicons mutually interact and cross in the processof information processing by connecting with neural information processing network systemthrough neurons and neural nodes. This is the main content of “Bilingual Double StructuresTheory” and its advent provides a brand-new perspective for the study on bilingual mentallexicon.Based on the theoretical foundation of “Bilingual Double Structures Theory”, this thesisexplores the differences between English and Chinese and specific mental processingmechanism of foreign language learning as well as the notion and information processingfeatures of bilingual mental lexicon at the theoretical level. Then taking20accounting majorsophomores from Tianfu College in South Western University of Finance and Economics and15English majors who have passed TEM8as its subjects, this research also empirically studiesthe differences and connections between English and Chinese mental lexicons, the nature ofbilingual mental lexicon and the influence of English proficiency on English and Chinesemental lexicons. The experimental data is handled by SPSS13.0software. Through theoreticalanalyses and empirical studies, following conclusions are made: 1. English-Chinese bilingual mental lexicons have both systematic differences andconnections. Specifically, the proportion of non-semantic links (including clang-other and noresponse) in English mental lexicon is significant higher than that of Chinese mental lexicon.The shared concept system of English-Chinese mental lexicons is the bond to connect the twomental lexicons.2. The influence of English proficiency on the organizational structure of mother tonguemental lexicon is not significant, but English proficiency influences the organizational structureof foreign language mental lexicon directly. To be specific, semantic links dominate theorganization of mother tongue mental lexicon with few clang-other and no response links forboth English high and low level groups. When it refers to English associated words,non-semantic responses show a tendency to decline and semantic responses increaseaccordingly with the improvement of English proficiency. Meanwhile, the assumption of thesyntactic-paradigmatic shift with the improvement of English proficiency in organizationalstructure of foreign language mental lexicon has not been proved.3. Chinese foreign language learners learn English in the mother tongue environment andthey are affected by mother tongue language and thinking systems all the time no matter whatare their foreign language levels. However, with the increase of English proficiency, theimpact from mother tongue language and thinking system tends to decline. Generally speaking,the information processing capability of foreign language mental lexicon is weaker than that ofmother tongue mental lexicon.4. The nature of English-Chinese bilingual mental lexicons is semantic, but thephonological link also plays an important role in the processing system of foreign languagemental lexicon, and it is one of the important link types of foreign language mental lexicon.The empirical research further proves the rationality of the “Bilingual Double StructuresTheory”. At last, the author provides two points of view on vocabulary learning and teaching,namely, to make full use of mother tongue and try to develop association ability of foreignlanguage mental lexicon.