A Comparative Study Of Word Association Patterns In The Mental Lexicon Between Tibetan Mandarin Chinese(L2) Learners And Chinese Native Speakers(L1)

The academic community generally believes that the mental lexicon refers to the vocabulary stored in the long-term or permanent memory of the human brain.It includes all the linguistic information such as semantic,lexical,syntactic,phonetic,and morphological information.The theoretical basis of this study is the theory of mental lexical networks.The immediate responses,that is,the responses automatically produced by subjects,are the strongest and most closely connected words in the mind.Through the analysis of the association responses,it can be found that the storage mode and distribution state of the mental lexicon,and speculated the representation of the mental lexicon in the mind and the connection between words.This thesis makes a comparative study of word association patterns in the mental lexicon between Tibetan Mandarin Chinese(L2)and Chinese Native Speakers(L1).The author of this thesis tries to answer three research questions :(1)Are there any similarities or differences in the network structure of word association patterns between TLMC(Tibetan learners of Mandarin Chinese L2)and CNS(Chinese native speakers L1)?(2)Do the word type and word frequency have any influence on the word association responses of TLMC and CNS?(3)Does the Chinese language proficiency have any influence on the word association results of TLMC and CNS?This study explores the similarities and differences of association patterns between TLMC and CNS through word association tests,which not only fills the blank of the organization of mental lexicon of minority Chinese language learners but also gives an important implication to minorities on Chinese language learning.