An Experimental Study On Semantic Access Model Of Russian-English-Chinese Trilinguals

The semantic access models of trilinguals are conducted on the basis of studies on the bilingual memory representation.There is no denying the fact that trilingual studies are more complicated compared with the bilingual studies,due to the potential influence on the semantic access routes of L3 from the already established system of lexical and conceptual representation between L1 and L2(Sanz,Park,& Lado,2015).Besides,the semantic accessing routes of L3 in the previous studies are inconsistent,in terms of how the L3 words find a way to connect to the conceptual representation,namely,by recalling L1 words,L2 words or both L1 and L2 words.In most trilingual studies at abroad,three languages are Indo-European languages that have certain similarities to some extent.In this case,it is hard to determine whether the semantic accessing routes of L3 are caused by language similarity or the other factors.Some domestic studies on semantic access models of trilingual learners can better control the language distance,such as some studies recruited oversea students whose mother tongue is the language of their own country,with English as the second language and Chinese as the third language.For example,Li et al.(2016)explored the function of L1 and L2 in the semantic accessing routes of L3 of Indonesian-English-Chinese trilinguals.The main findings of this study were that their L3 words connected to concepts via both L1 and L2 words.However,this study only focuses on the role of L1 and L2 in the semanticaccessing routes of L3 without investigating the the function of L1 and L3 in the semantic access of L2.According to the RHM,there are two connection types between L1 and L2,namely,the Word Association Model and the Concept Mediation Model.Therefore,an interesting question rises as to which one on earth is the semantic access model of the L2 words.In addition,although participants' L1 Indonesian and L2 English do not belong to the same language family,they have similar orthographic systems.Therefore,studies with orthographically different languages would seem to be valuable in obtaining more comprehensive understanding of the semantic access models of trilinguals.In the present study,native speakers of Russian-English-Chinese are recruited for the reason that these two languages are typologically distant as compared to Indonesian and English.In addition,according to the Typological Proximity Model proposed by Rothman(2010),linguistic typological similarity has great influence on a newly learned language,indicating that the semantic accessing routes of L3 may be influenced by typologically similar languages.The research paradigm was the cross-language repetition priming effect,in which participants were asked to perform two phases of tasks.In the first phase,that was the learning phase,semantic decision tasks were designed in which participants were required to judge whether a word in one language(e.g.L1)referred to something living or nonliving.In the second phase,that was the testing phase,lexical decision tasks were designed in which participants were asked to make a decision on whether a word in another language(e.g.L2)was a real word or not.In the testingphase,the reaction times and error rates of words whose translation equivalents occurred in the learning phase were analyzed and compared to indicate whether the cross-language repetition priming effect occurred or not.The semantic accessing routes of L3,tested by its priming effect on L1 and L2 as the targets,and L2,tested by its priming effect on L1 and L3 as the targets were investigated in the present study.Four experiments are involved in the present study.Experiments 1a and 1b respectively investigate the roles of L1 and L2 words in the semantic accessing routes of L3 words;experiments 2a and 2b respectively explore the roles of L1 and L3 in the semantic access routes of L2 words.Priming effect is only found in experiment 1a,indicating that L3 words connect to concepts by activating L1 words rather than L2 words and L2 words can directly connect to concepts without activating either L1 or L3 words.The result of experiment 1a shows strong evidence to support the Revised Hierarchical Model because L1 words are activated in the semantic access of L3,whereas the result of experiment 1b is inconsistent with L2 Status Factor Model due to the absence of L2 words in the semantic access of L3.Meanwhile,the combined results of experiments 2a and 2b also support the Revised Hierarchical Model in a larger part and the result of experiment 2b indicates that L2 words do not form the semantic route to connect to concepts with the aid of L3 words.