| With the increasing number of bilinguals,psychologists and linguists have done a lot of research on the bilingual population.Their research focuses on bilingual representation.Bilingual representation refers to how two languages are stored and organized in the same brain.Although,researchers agree that bilingual representations include both lexical and conceptual aspects,where conceptual representations are shared and lexical representations are separated(Potter,So,Eckardt,& Feldman,1984),the issue of the relationship between the second language(L2)familiarity and the dynamic development of bilingual representation is still controversial.The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether L2 word familiarity has an impact on the cognitive mechanism of the dynamic development of bilingual representation.Experiments 1and 2 research unproficient bilinguals,using cross-language masking prime paradigm.Experiment 1 allowed the bilinguals to perform the true or false lexical decision task(LDT),and experiment 2 allowed the bilinguals to perform the semantic category task(SCT).Through the two tasks,we study whether there are differences in the representation of high-familiarity L2 word and low-familiarity L2 word among unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals.If there is a difference,it indicates that L2 word familiarity affects the bilingual representation of unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals.Experiments 3 and 4 only changed the L2 proficiency level of the participants,and studied whether there were differences in the representation of high-familiarity L2 words and low-familiarity L2 words among proficient Chinese-English bilinguals.If there is a difference,it means that the L2 word familiarity also affects the bilingual representation of the proficient Chinese-English bilinguals.Experiment 1(LDT)found that for unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals,L2 words with different familiarity had different cross-language priming modes.The cross-language priming of the high-proficiency L2 word was symmetry,while the cross-language priming of the low-proficiency L2 word was asymmetry.However,Experiment 2(SCT)found that for unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals,regardless of the familiarity of L2 words,typical cross-language priming asymmetry appeared.The results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2suggest that L2 word familiarity has a regulatory effect on the bilingual representation of unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals,but it should be noted that the regulation of this L2 word familiarity only occurs in the lexical level,does not occur at the semantic level.Experiment 3(LDT)found that for the proficient Chinese-English bilinguals,the L2 wordwith different familiarity had the same cross-language priming mode.The high-familiarity L2 word and the the low-familiarity L2 word were both the asymmetry of masked cross-language priming.However,Experiment 4(SCT)found that different familiar L2 word had different cross-language priming modes.The cross-language priming of the high-familiarity L2 word was symmetry,while the cross-language priming of the low-proficiency L2 word was asymmetry.The results of Experiment 3 and Experiment 4 suggest that L2 vocabulary familiarity also has a regulatory effect on the bilingual representation of proficient Chinese-English bilinguals,but contrary to the unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals,this L2 word familiarity effect does not occur at the lexical level,but only at the semantic level.Based on the research results,we draw the following conclusions:(1)L2 word familiarity has an impact on the bilingual representation of both proficient Chinese-English bilinguals and unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals.However,the cognitive abilities of L2 word familiarity to different proficiency Chines-English bilinguals occur differently.(2)For low-familiarity L2 word,the proficient Chinese-English bilinguals and the unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals have the same bilingual representation.However,for the high-familiarity L2 word,there is a fundamental different bilingual representation between the the proficient Chinese-English bilinguals and the unproficient Chinese-English bilinguals.(3)To explain the dynamic development relationship between L2 word familiarity,L2 individual proficiency and bilingual representation,we could model a bilingual representation that is largely based on the Revised Hirearchical Model(Kroll & Stewart,1994),the Sense Model(Finkbeiner,Forster,Nicol,& Nakamura,2004;Wang & Forster,2010)and the Three-tages of Lexical Development In L2 model(Jiang,2001). |
