Do Bilinguals Have Different Conceptual Representation From Monolingual? The Case Of Item Categorization In Tibetan-Mandarin Bilinguals

Since Whorf (1940) expressed what we called the Whorf Hypothesis,which essentially states that language influnces people’s conceptualrepresentation of reality, it has generated vigorous debate in different fields.However, despite critiques of Whorf’s hypothesis, empirical evidences haveindeed shown that at least for some domains, speakers of different languages doevaluate reality differently. For instance, previous studies demonstrated thatdifferent language monolinguals tended to categorize items different, such thatadult monolingual Japanese speakers tended to categorize items according totheir material, while adult monolingual English speakers tended to categorizeitems according to their shape (Imai＆Gentner,1997). If speakers of differentlanguage perceive reality differently, how do bilinguals perceive this world? Bynon-verbal investigative techniques such as similarity judgments, recent worksyield futher advancements in our undertanding about the nature of conceptualrepresentation in bilinguals (Pavlenko et al,2005,2008; Cook et al,2006).Their studies find that bilingual speakers whose languages encode reality indifferent ways tend to display variable cognitive behaviour, sometimesresembling monolingual speakers of their L1, sometimes resemblingmonolingual speakers of the L2, but most times falling somewhere in-between.The present study follows the research design of Imai and Gentner’s andextends Cook’s investigation by looking at cognitive processing of itemcategorization in Tibetan-Mandarin bilinguals. The aim of the study is toexamine whether Tibetan-Mandarin bilinguals’ item categorization is influencedby acquiring Mandarin and which conceptual possibility can be a betterexplanation for what really happen in bilingual’s mind. More importantly, thestudy also examine to what degree linguistic and extralinguistic variablesmodulate Tibetan-Mandarin bilinguals’ item categorization. Results show thatTibetan-Mandarin bilinguals’ preferences for shape-and material-basedcategorizations in simple object differ from monolingual speakers but end upbetween monolinguals of two languages, suggesting that bilinguals’ conceptualrepresentation is affected by L2and the two sets of concepts are to some extentintegrated; that those bilinguals who used Mandarin more frequently categorized simple objects as shape more than those who used Tibetan more frequently,which implies that bilingual cognition may be dynamic and flexible, as thedegree to which it resembles that of either monolingual norm is, in this case,fundamentally a matter of frequency of language use.