 |
АвтоАвтоматизацияАрхитектураАстрономияАудитБиологияБухгалтерияВоенное делоГенетикаГеографияГеологияГосударствоДомДругоеЖурналистика и СМИИзобретательствоИностранные языкиИнформатикаИскусствоИсторияКомпьютерыКулинарияКультураЛексикологияЛитератураЛогикаМаркетингМатематикаМашиностроениеМедицинаМенеджментМеталлы и СваркаМеханикаМузыкаНаселениеОбразованиеОхрана безопасности жизниОхрана ТрудаПедагогикаПолитикаПравоПриборостроениеПрограммированиеПроизводствоПромышленностьПсихологияРадиоРегилияСвязьСоциологияСпортСтандартизацияСтроительствоТехнологииТорговляТуризмФизикаФизиологияФилософияФинансыХимияХозяйствоЦеннообразованиеЧерчениеЭкологияЭконометрикаЭкономикаЭлектроникаЮриспунденкция
The mental lexicon in a bilingual)
Different languages lead to different mental lexicons. The question of great importance is to find out what universal and specific features the mental lexicon of any human being possesses. Bilmguals are of special interest from this point of view.
A bilingual is a person who is fluent in (wo languages. It is estimated that half the population of the world is bilingual.
In the mind of a bilingual two language systems coexist at the same time, and many questions concerning the architecture of language ability, such as representation, storage, accessing and processing of the lexicon, should be studied not only in monolinguals but in bilinguals, too.
Bilingualism also offers a unique opportunity for examining the relation between language and thought. If language influences thought, then there are grounds to believe that in a bilingual there are two conceptual systems, one corresponding to each language. If language primarily expresses the results of thought processes that are universal for speakers of all languages then we may expect only one conceptual system underlying both languages.
Though it is widely accepted that a bilingual has two lexicons, there is no general agreement on how different lexicons are organized in the mind of a bilingual speaker and how they are related to the conceptual system.
There are two major theories on lexical representation in the mind of a bilingual:
I. Segregated language models that support the idea of segregated conceptual systems
II. Integrated language models that support the idea of one integrated conceptual system in the.mind of a bilingual.
On one hand, evidence for the unity of conceptual system but separability of language forms comes from studies of language code switching — a change from one language to another in the same situation or even utterance.
But the answer is not as easy as it may seem. Studies of different types of bilingualism give different data on the relation of language and conceptual systems. Bilingualism can be compound if a child learns two languages simultaneously in one and the same place, and coordinate if a person acquires two languages in distinct contexts separated by a time interval. It is proven that in the case of compound bilingualism, in which a child has only
one environment and only one type of experience with the same objects that are called differently, the two related words in different languages have the same affective meaning. But for coordinate-bilingual speakers the correlative words in each language may have different affective meanings. For example, on the semantic differential rating scale (see Chapter 4) the English word bread is thought of as 'good and weak', while the German word brot is rated as 'good and strong'. The difference may be accounted for by different experiences a person may have with the object in different countries and it is possible that conceptual representations of the object in a bilinguaPs mind may be different in this case.
The ability of a bilingual to keep their languages apart or to mix them at will is one of the most intriguing features that cannot be explained today. This ability, however, may be lost in many aphasic bilingual patients. Some of them may gradually recover all their languages or only one of them.
As stated above, little is known about native language acquisition. But the situation with the second language acquisition is even worse. There is no satisfactory theory on language and vocabulary acquisition by bilinguals.
Recently a theory has emerged which is based on the Chomskian view that all languages arc learned by setting parameters in the special "Language Acquisition Device" wired in our brain, and that second language learning involves just the resetting of some parameters. This view stresses the similarity of both processes.
The theory may be correct when the general mechanism of the language faculty is meant, yet, our experience tells us that there are radical differences in learning processes. A child learns the mother tongue vocabulary in a totally different way than he later learns the vocabulary of the second language. The second language is learned on the basis of the native tongue. When adults set out to learn a new language, they realize they will have to learn new phonology, grammar and vocabulary. Learning the vocabulary may seem to be the easiest thing but it turns into a life-long experience. Adult learners expect their teachers to explain the meaning of words to them in their mother tongue and spend years and years to become really fluent in a foreign language.
It is well known that one cannot acquire the vocabulary of a foreign language by studying a dictionary list of words. One should know even many more things about words that dictionary can provide and learn them in a different, more efficient way than studying their entries in a dictionary.
There is no doubt that further investigation of the structure of the mental lexicon in bilinguals and the ways of its acquisition will lead to the development of a new methodology in second and foreign language teaching.
Further Reading:
Залевская Л Л Вопросы овладения вторым языком в психолингвистическом аспекте.- Тверь, 1996.
Психолингвистические проблемы семантики. - М.: Паука, 1983. Aitchison, J. Words m the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon. 2'"1 edition. -
Oxford: OUP, 1994. Jackendqff, R. The Architecture of the Language Faculty. -- Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.
Katamba, b'r English words. - New York: St.Martin's Press, 1994 Miller, GA, Johnson-Laird, P. N Language and Perception Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1976 Nelson, К Individual differences in language development: Implications for development
and language // Developmental psychology, 1981, 17, pp. 170-187. Smith, M.C Accessing the Bilingual Lexicon // Resolving Semantic Ambiguity. Hd.
David S.Gorfem. Springer-Verlag, 1989. pp.109-125. The Acquisition of the Lexicon. Ed. by Lila Glcitman and Barbara Landau. - Cambridge,
MA; London, England: A Bradford Book, 1994.
Glucksberg, S, Danfo. JII. Experimental psychohnguistics. An Introduction. - Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1975.
Conclusion. In a word: General characteristics of modern English vocabulary
"The vocabulary of a language is the measuring-rod of the sum total of the activities of that language's speakers. " — M. Pei. The story of the English language, 1967:124.
The most efficient communication between people is verbal. Without words there is no human language In different speech communities the number of words, their form and meaning, their origin and use is different, and it is this difference in lexicons that alongside specific grammar and phonology that makes the way humans communicate with each other a separate language.
Of all the language components lexicon is the most sensitive to man's social life, its development is influenced by different extralinguistic factors. One of the specific characteristics of the lexicon in modern English is that it is very extensive. Though it is not possible to give the exact amount of lexical units in any language because there is not a complete unanimity what should be considered a lexical unit, and because lexicon is loo complex, dynamic and flexible for any accurate calculations, dictionary makers estimate that in English there are somewhere from 450,000 to 3,000 000 words.
The English language vocabulary development is very dynamic. Many words like mizzle 'dri//le', loom 'empty' become obsolete and drop out of the system. But still many more words arc born. The characteristic feature of the English vocabulary is ils steady replenishment.
The expansion of vocabulary is especially noticeable in the sphere of terminology New developments in science and technology brought in use such words as television, laser, vinyl, computer, software, diskette, video, modem, to log in, high-tech, on-line, and there is no limit to their potential number.
Such reccnl prefixes like -mini-, maxi-, super-, micro-, mega-, hyper- arc very active and highly productive in creating new words: mini-diskette, superchip, micro-surgery, or hypersonic.
Minor word-formations like blendings, or portmanteau words (pompetent for 'pompous but competent', smust (smoke and dust), sexplosion for 'sex explosion', movelist for 'a writer for the movies') and analogical word-formations like beef-a-roni;rice-a-roni, noodle-rani after the original macaroni or cheeseburger, fishburger after hamburger have become quite numerous in modern English.
A Native American proverb suggests that language changes within a mile. No wonder then that the English language, one of world languages spoken in all the continents by millions of people, exists in a great number of variants and dialects. The existing varieties of English are made first of all by lexical differences, as well as differences in phonetic and grammatical systems.
Still another characteristic feature of the English lexicon is its mixed etymological character. A Germanic language, linglish borrowed up to 70% of its total vocabulary from more than 50 languages of the world. Though not so intensively as during and after the periods of invasion of Great Britain, foreign words still enrich the English lexicon: hfbe, baguette, bouillon [Fr], baba, babushka, borshch [Russ], a capella, bambino [It], charisma [Gk], bonsai, sushi \ Jap], caramba, or basque [Sp]. The majority of them were remodelled and assimilated according to the specific features of the English language system; some of them are still being assimilated. Taking into account the number of words borrowed from French and Latin, English is regarded by some linguists as half-Romance. Classical (i.e. from Latin and Greek) borrowings and neo-classical compounds constitute perhaps the absolute majority of all the words in the language though they are usually not used frequently. Not only words but many affixes came from Latin and Greek with the Renaissance, many of them became very productive and are often used with native roots forming such hybrids as womanize, witticism, etc.
Loan words radically changed the structure of the Old English lexicon. They led to numerous etymological doublets, homonyms, created a three-member pattern of stylistically different synonyms neutral ones being traced to Anglo-Saxon roots, literary words coming from French and learned words being borrowed from Latin.
However, native, predominantly monosyllabic words of Anglo-Saxon origin arc still the most frequently used, polysemantic, communicatively important, and thus remain the core of the lexical system of modern English.
Specific characteristics of the English vocabulary are also revealed in all morphological
and lexical-semantic aspects of a word. *
Monomorphism of many words consisting of only roots (love, answer, sail, hate, birth, death, etc.) is one of the most distinctive features of the English vocabulary that was developed in the course of its history. Most of them, both native and loans, are also monosyllables: eye, head, nose, cat, dog, home, bed; air, cost, firm, pay, push, cry, move; die, egg, leg, sky, skirt; disc, pain.
These short words naming the most important concepts for human survival and further development possess a tremendous potential for derivation and they act as sources for new names derived by lexical-semantic, morphological and lexical-syntactic means.
Their active use in lexical-semantic naming lead to a high degree of polysemy of English words, estimated as one of the highest in the European languages.
Like in other Indo-European languages they are the bases for many morphologically derived words by means of affixation, composition, conversion, and other word buildingmeans that finally make up the majority of word-stock in English.
Linguistic and extralinguistic restrictions on long words prevent them from participating in numerous acts of derivation, and the majority of English derived words arc the products of the first or the second degree of derivation as it can be seen in the morphological
family of the noun hand: handy, handiness, handy-man, handily; handless, handbag, handbarrow, handbook, hand-breadth, hand-cart, handcuff, to handcuff, handful, hand-out, handshake. Derivatives of the third and fourth degree of derivation, like non-environmentalist, arc rare in English.
High productivity of conversion as well as some other non-affixal ways of word-derivation such as shortening, back-formation, transposition, and some others, make many English derived words remain monomorphic (to knife, a fan, to edit, the rich).
Compounding is one of the most important types of word-formation in F.nglish. Within the system of English compounds the predominant part is made up of composites -without a linking element (snowman, oil-rich, sky-blue). The mere juxtaposition of immediate constituents in linglish compounds alongside the lack of any other reliable criterion for referring a composite to the class of compounds make it difficult for lexicologists and lexicographers to differentiate among numerous cases of wide use of nouns in attributive function (as a life story, a stone wall). Semantically most important component in English compounds is always the second root.
English words are more polysemantic than Russian words and are characterized by a wide lexical and grammatical collocability.
In addition to different restrictions naturally provided by the English language system (cf.: strong tea but powerful argument), some collocations of words, and even some sentences, become more fixed as a result of their frequent use in speech. They change into readily reproduced cliches and finally become lexicalized alongside with morphemes and words. We are quick to say wrong number when answering some telephone calls, or Good morning! when we greet a friend, we take the bus or walk on foot. In English, as in any other language, there are also, numerous word groups that semantically cannot be reduced to the meanings of their components and are characterized by functional integrity (to break the ice, in the long run, mare's nest, etc.). Such idiomatic word groups along with words as smaller units and proverbs, sayings or quotations as longer ready-made units, are also part and parcel of the English lexicon.
Though lexicon is not any more viewed as a list of irregularities that have to be memorized but a certain system and structure having a generative character, the process of vocabulary acquisition for both first and second language learners is still a long and pains taking process because lexical rules are not rigid. Rather than strict laws they are major tendencies and arc limited to particular groups of lexicon.
Segmentation of lexicon into lexical-semantic classes of words, ways of concept naming, semantic features chosen for motivation, morphemic, derivational and semantic structures, grammatical and lexical collocations of the correlative words in different languages are to a great extent arbitrary, and it needs a lot of practice to acquire them to avoid lexical-semantic errors in using a language.
But theoretical knowledge of a foreign language lexicon structure is a kind of a map that presents the major lines of differences and makes learning more efficient and enjoyable.
Поиск по сайту: