The Influence Of Word Familiarity,First Language And Word Class On The Mental Lexicon Of Intermediate CSL Learners

Lexical representation of mental lexicon refers to how the lexical knowledge stored and activated in the memory.Based on mental lexicon theory,this paper studies the influence of word familiarity,learner’s native language and word class type on the L2 mental lexicon of intermediate CSL learners.This study investigates the results of word association test which distributed to 30 CSL learners that largely belong to two kinds of different native languages with 30 words from three different word classes in two levels of word familiarity.The results suggest that the way of lexical knowledge stored mainly depends on the word familiarity and word class type,and the influence of learner’s native language is not a main factor for intermediate CSL learners anymore.First,for intermediate learners,the semantic connections between words in mental lexicon will increase with the improvement of word familiarity.Among the semantic connections,the number of syntagmatic connections will increase,and paradigmatic connections will decrease while affective connections remain static.Second,the influence of learner’s native language only affects the number of affective connections.The learners who speak Japanese and Korean produce more connections than those Russian-speaking learners.Third,nouns,verbs and adjectives will be stored in the memory in different ways.Nouns can produce more paradigmatic connections than others,verbs and adjectives can produce more syntagmatic connections,and nouns and verbs can produce more affective connections.Moreover,it also suggests learners of intermediate proficiency have developed an awareness of lexical structure and word class.Based on the results,it suggests that teachers should cultivate the sense of lexical structure and word class according to learner’s language proficiency and pay attention to the influence of other external factors.