Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism

COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF BILINGUALISM

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COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF BILINGUALISM Edited by ISTVAN KECSKES State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA and LILIANA ALBERTAZZI Trento University, Rovereto, Italy

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CONTENTS

Preface

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Part 1 Structure and Components of the Bilingual Cognitive System Chapter 1. The Neurofunctional Components of the Bilingual Cognitive System Michel Paradis Chapter 2. Synergic Concepts in the Bilingual Mind Istvan Kecskes

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Chapter 3. Matrix: Schematic Universals. How Many Minds Does a Bilingual Have? Liliana Albertazzi

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Chapter 4. Grammatical Gender in the Bilingual Lexicon: A Psycholinguistic Approach Angeliki Salamoura

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Chapter 5. Bilingualism and Cognitive Arithmetic Elena Rusconi, Giovanni Galfano, and Remo Job Chapter 6. The Role of Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Experiences in Bilinguals’ Divergent Thinking Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin

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CONTENTS

Part 2 Bilingual Language Processing Chapter 7. Task and Context Effects in Bilingual Lexical Processing Ton Dijkstra

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Chapter 8. Representation and Skill in Second Language Learners and Proficient Bilinguals Judith F. Kroll and Jared A. Linck

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Chapter 9. Second Language Gender System Affects First Language Gender Classification Elena Andonova, Ani Gosheva, Armina Janyan, and Jasmin Sadat Schaffai Chapter 10. Beyond Language: Childhood Bilingualism Enhances High-Level Cognitive Functions Ágnes Melinda Kovács Chapter 11. Cross-Linguistic and Cognitive Structures in the Acquisition of WH-Questions in an Indonesian-Italian Bilingual Child Antonia Soriente

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Our everyday life is characterized by conscious purposiveness. Our actions, from preparing lunch to designing an experiment, are directed at goals. Anderson (1996) argued that this purposiveness reveals itself partly in our conscious awareness, partly in the organization of our thoughts and actions. Purposiveness involves a cognitive-functional perspective, in which thought and action are considered in relation to their functions in humans’ goal-oriented behavior. Language use is goal-oriented: we intend to communicate something to someone else. Research has demonstrated that a significant amount of cognitive development results from the internalization of interpersonal communicative processes. Consequently, language research should be cognitive research, and a cognitive theory of language appears to be the most suitable theoretical framework for bringing together psychology, linguistics, and bi- and multilingualism. This volume presents the latest research on cognitive aspects of bilingualism. Cognitive approaches to bilingualism attempt to find out what happens if the interpersonal communicative processes involve the use of two or more languages. The basic assumptions of cognitive theories of language are related to the ontology and the epistemology of human language. In cognitive linguistic theories researchers take different approaches to the “outside world-→ perception-→ inside world” relationships. The two main approaches are represented in the works of Langacker (1991, 1999) and Jackendoff (1983, 2002). Langacker’s cognitive theory of language analyzes meaning only on the conceptual level. His claim that “meaning reduces to conceptualization (mental experiences)” refers to the fact that perception is part of the process of conceptualization, and if so, then there are no clear boundaries between perception and interpretation. vii

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Langacker focuses on epistemology rather than ontology because for him perception is incorporated in the conceptualization process. In his theory there is little said about the outside world because he is mainly interested in the process of conceptualization. Jackendoff makes a clear distinction between real world and projected world, although he emphasizes that we have conscious access only to the projected world, which is “the world as unconsciously organized by the mind.” Information conveyed by language must be about the projected world. Most of the chapters in this volume follow Jackendoff’s line, which is a good fit to bi- and multilingual research because people with two or more languages may see the world from two perspectives, or from a synergic perspective. Differences in the outside world usually result in different projected worlds. Both the experimental results and the systematic claims in this volume call for a weak form of Whorfianism. In earlier research studies in bilingualism, the bilingual person and the product of thinking were at the center of attention, while recent trends have seemed to favor the process of thinking, focusing on language recall, reaction time, information processing, and memorization on the one hand, and social and conceptual development on the other. In this volume some relatively new or less-researched issues will be added to the well-known ones, such as gender systems in the bilingual mind, context and task, synergic concepts, conceptual blending, the relationship between lexical categorization and ontological categorization, and others. Discussions on these issues are unified by a common endeavor of the authors: to add something to the everlasting debate about the differences and similarities between monolingual and bilingual language development and use. Although current research tends to conclude that there are no major differences between monolinguals and bi- and multilinguals because their language systems develop and are used in a similar way (e.g., Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz 2005; Paradis in this volume) researchers do not stop looking for differences. Several chapters (Paradis, Kecskes, Albertazzi, Kharkhurin, Kovacs) address this intriguing issue directly. Recent findings that the efficiency of bilingual language acquisition is fundamentally similar to monolingual language acquisition make one think that, at least in the language domain, bilingualism does not seem

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to alter the flow of normal language development. However, as Kovacs says in this volume, even if the outcome seems to be similar, this does not necessarily mean that the bilingual brain recruits the same mechanisms in the same manner when processing two languages as the monolingual brain operating one language. Mechanisms such as attention, inhibition, and selection might be used to a greater extent when dealing with complex input from which bilinguals have to construct two different systems. Three chapters (Kecskes, Kharkhurin, Kovacs) provide evidence of the capacity of bilinguals to perform blending operations among concepts in L1 and L2, but it is questionable if there is a real process of fusion. Some evidence refers to the fact that the concepts in L1 maintain their identity notwithstanding their being more easily translated, associated, and synthesized in L2. A bilingual is easily able to build up hierarchies of conceptualization, but the relative spaces do not fuse together. Kecskes’ findings show that there is some kind of synergism between existing L1-based knowledge and knowledge gained through the L2. Receiving new information through L2, bilinguals may change the conceptual domain attached to particular labels (words) and develop what is called “synergic concepts.” However, further research is needed to determine how exactly this process occurs, and what the outcomes of this conceptual change are in the bilingual mind. The chapters present both experimental data and systematic inquiries. The book consists of two parts. In the first part, the chapters focus on the structure and components of the bilingual cognitive system, while chapters in the second part discuss issues concerning bilingual language processing. In the first part of the volume there are six chapters. Paradis argues for a modular system of the bilingual mind. The neurofunctional system underlying implicit linguistic competence contains one subsystem for each language acquired by the speaker. Each subsystem contains its own phonology, morphosyntax, semantics and lexicon. The language subsystems, including their lexicons, are neurofunctionally distinct, but not stored in separate cerebral areas. Rather, the neural circuits that subserve them, while distinct, are intertwined within the same gross anatomical area. Kecskes presents his hypothesis of synergic concepts

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that are the results of conceptual blending. According to his approach, bilinguals get information about the same or similar concepts through two language channels. Because they have a common underlying conceptual base (CUCB) the blended information results in concepts that are neither exactly equal to the corresponding L1 concept nor to the corresponding L2 concept. Synergic concepts are a group of concepts that are lexicalized in both languages, but have a different socio-cultural load in each language. Albertazzi’s chapter underlines the importance of the ontological level of reality for linguistic research, which, in her opinion, has been ignored to a particular extent in cognitive linguistics in recent years. She emphasizes the structural differences among different kinds of categories, distinguishing between general ontological categories and regional ontological ones. The chapter shows that “recognizing” an item does not mean, by default, applying a taxonomic category or a base category. On that basis, a proposal is made for experiments to verify the existence of presentative pathologies, that is, pathologies occurring at the very basic format of representations. Salamoura’s study investigates the nature of gender representations in the bilingual lexicon, and claims that research on the organization of the bilingual lexicon points to an L1–L2 integrated gender system in which cognates rely more on the L1 gender value than noncognates. The chapter also suggests that this integrated gender system is not restricted to translation-equivalent nouns only, but that any L1 and L2 nouns with the same gender value share a gender representation in the bilingual lexicon. Rusconi, Galfano and Job intended to frame the relationship between bilingualism and number processing into a novel perspective by reporting some of the most recent empirical findings. They argue that a great deal of our knowledge of numbers is traded, thought, and manipulated by means of language, and seek an answer to the question of how essential verbal language is to numerical knowledge itself. Kharkhurin’s study investigates a possible effect that bilingualism might have on creative abilities. Three factors in cross-linguistic and cross-cultural experiences of bilingual individuals are examined: language proficiency, age of second language acquisition, and experience and participation in two cultures. The empirical study with Russian-English bilingual immigrants living in the United States and English monolingual native speakers revealed

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that cross-linguistic factors in bilinguals’ development had an influence on their divergent thinking abilities, which is a necessary component of creative thought. These findings suggest that although bilingualism may lay the foundation of creative thinking it does not necessarily imply being creative. To account for these findings, a cross-language transfer is proposed as a cognitive mechanism facilitating divergent thinking in bilinguals. The second part contains five chapters. In the first chapter, Dijkstra argues that it is quite common in psycholinguistics to ignore the effects of task and context and talk about general models for particular domains of language processing. Researchers have a tendency to speak about, for instance, models of word recognition and parsing, as if performance would not depend on the actual circumstance in which it occurs. His chapter moves away from this tradition and examines the effects of task and context on language processing. He proposes a bilingual word recognition model that includes a system that explicitly takes into account task and context aspects. He demonstrates that the extended model is compatible not only with reaction time data, but also with data from electrophysiological and neuro-imaging techniques. In their chapter, Kroll and Linck examine the interplay of representation and skill in both second language learners and proficient bilinguals. A particular focus in their discussion concerns the implications of the finding that the activity of the unintended language is not eliminated once individuals achieve proficiency in the L2. Alarge body of recent research has demonstrated that even highly proficient bilinguals cannot effectively switch off the unintended language. There is evidence that aspects of both languages are active and potentially compete for selection. Although it might be expected that the weaker L2 would be affected by the more dominant L1 when learners are in early stages of L2 acquisition, the observation of parallel language activity among the most proficient bilinguals suggests that L2 skill is not a simple matter of overcoming the influence of L1. In an empirical study, Andonova, Gosheva, Schaffai and Janyan investigate the effect of the L2 gender system on L1 gender classification. They seek answers to the following questions: Does the acquisition of a second language in which grammatical gender demarcations do not

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repeat those in a bilingual’s first language lead to a contradictory set of expectations, hence less overall reliance on gender as a cue in linguistic and non-linguistic processing, or does it modify their representations of the grammatical items in their first language in line with the gender system of the second language? More specifically, can the grammatical system of L2 affect classification choices in L1 directly; that is, can the availability of a gender-marking system on nouns in L2 bias bilinguals’ preference for masculine vs. feminine gender classifications in their L1 in a way that would show alignment with the grammar of their second language? Kovacs makes an attempt to shed light on the ways in which the experience of being exposed to more than one language very early in childhood could influence the development of different cognitive abilities (with special emphasis on executive control and theory of mind). She discusses questions analogous to the ones that were asked when addressing the socalled paradox of bilingual language acquisition (Petitto et al. 2001), but she mainly focuses on socio-cognitive domains somewhat different from language development. Soriente examines language development in a bilingual child growing up with two typologically distinct languages – Italian and Jakarta Indonesian. She presents a case study of unbalanced bilingualism focusing on the development of WH-forms and concludes that the dominance of the loose Indonesian syntactic pattern results in a non-target word order in the construction of early WH-questions in Italian. The study discusses how children recognize languages as separate systems and how they gradually develop the cognitive patterns required for competence in separate though practically co-extensive linguistic domains. Istvan Kecskes and Liliana Albertazzi

REFERENCES Anderson, N. H. 1996. A functional theory of cognition. Mahwah: Erlbaum. Gumperz, J., and Jenny Cook-Gumperz. 2005. Making space for bilingual communicative practice. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(1): 1–25. Jackendoff, R. 1983. Semantics and Cognition. Cambridge: MIT.

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Jackendoff, R. 2002. Foundation of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Langacker, R. W. 1991. Concept, Image and Symbol, Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Langacker, R. W. 1999. Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Petitto, L. A., Katerelos, M., Levy, B. G., Gauna, K., Tetreault, K., and Ferraro, V. 2001. Bilingual signed and spoken language acquisition from birth: implications for the mechanisms underlying early bilingual language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 28: 453–496.

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PART 1 STRUCTURE AND COMPONENTS OF THE BILINGUAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM

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PART 1 STRUCTURE AND COMPONENTS OF THE BILINGUAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM

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CHAPTER 1

THE NEUROFUNCTIONAL COMPONENTS OF THE BILINGUAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM Michel Paradis McGill University, Montreal

Abstract The cognitive architecture of bilingual speakers contains at least four systems involved in verbal communication (i.e., implicit linguistic competence, explicit metalinguistic knowledge, pragmatic abilities and affect/motivation). The neurofunctional system that subserves implicit linguistic competence contains as many subsystems as the speaker has acquired languages. Each subsystem contains its phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and lexicon. These language subsystems are differentially connected to a single conceptual system that groups conceptual features together in accordance with the specific lexical semantic constraints of words in each language and the relevant pragmatic circumstances at the time of their use (Paradis 2004). Three main points will be discussed: (1) the distinction between the cerebral representation of concepts on the one hand and of lexical semantics on the other; (2) the representation of languages (including lexical semantics) as dissociable subsystems of the neurofunctional language system, connected to a single common conceptual system; and (3) the lack of qualitative difference between unilingual and bilingual brains in terms of conceptual organization and processing (though the contents of the representations may, and often do, differ). To paraphrase Kecskes and Papp (2000: 37), the main question will be: To what extent are the two languages [neuro] functionally independent, and to what extent do they constitute a single [neuro]functional system? Special emphasis will be placed on the relationship between the linguistic and conceptual levels.

1. B A C K G R O U N D

1.1. Neurofunctional Components of the Verbal Communication System As described in greater detail in a neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism (Paradis 2004), the native language (i.e., the grammar, what can be described by linguists in terms of rules: phonology, morphology, syntax and the lexicon) is acquired incidentally (i.e., by paying 3 I. Kecskes and L. Albertazzi (eds.), Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism, 3–28. © 2007 Springer.

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attention to something other than what is being internalized as linguistic competence), is stored implicitly (i.e., remains opaque to introspection), and is used automatically (i.e., comprehension and production are not consciously controlled). This implicit linguistic competence is subserved by procedural memory, which relies on neural structures in the right cerebellum, left basal ganglia – in particular the neostriatum – and perisylvian cortex (the classical language areas). In addition, individuals are aware of the observable characteristics of the manifestations of speech, including their own production, in particular the forms and default meanings of words. In other words, speakers are conscious of the input to, and output from, implicit linguistic competence, but not of the internal structure and operation of that competence. The knowledge emerging from these conscious observations is stored in declarative memory, which relies on neural structures in the hippocampal system, including the parahippocampal gyri and mesial temporal lobes. Its use is consciously controlled and as such, involves the anterior cingular cortex. Learners of a foreign language who are not exposed to constant communication with speakers of that language generally learn about the structure of the language from books or in the formal environment of a classroom. This learning, being conscious, is therefore subserved by explicit (declarative) memory. Because implicit linguistic competence is acquired only through frequent use of the language, foreign language learners often have little occasion to acquire implicit linguistic competence in L2. With time, especially if they enter into frequent real-life communication with speakers of that language, they may eventually acquire some implicit linguistic competence, but they will most likely continue to rely to a great extent on explicit metalinguistic knowledge. Besides the grammar of their language, speakers acquire the ability to infer intended meanings from the context in which utterances are produced, whether it be literal (the meaning derived from the meanings of words and the structure of the sentence, i.e., its semantic meaning), figurative, metaphorical, or simply enhanced by the situational, social, and discourse contexts. This is known as pragmatic ability. Each language possesses some specific pragmatic cues in addition to general pragmatic principles. Pragmatic ability is subserved by areas of the right hemisphere (Van Lancker 1997).

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No one would ever say anything without the desire to communicate a message. Motivation is at the root of every utterance. It has been shown to have a considerable impact on the acquisition (Schumann 1998; Schumann et al. 2004) and attrition (Schmid 2002, 2004; Pavlenko 2005) of languages. Moreover, the manifestations of affect are closely related to certain forms in each language and language-specific pragmatics. Motivation, and affect in general, are subserved by a cerebral mechanism involving the amygdala and the dopaminergic system (Schumann & Wood 2004). All these neurofunctional systems are independent of each other, subserved as they are by different cerebral structures, and can be doubly dissociated by pathology. One system may serve as input to another, but does not modify its internal structure. For instance, pragmatics does not modify any part of the grammar; it only selects the elements of each component of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax and lexical semantics) that optimally fit the intended meaning in the given context of each utterance. Whereas implicit linguistic competence is susceptible to impairment subsequent to damage to any of the cerebral structures that sustain it (aphasia), explicit metalinguistic knowledge is susceptible to impairment subsequent to damage to the hippocampal system (amnesia). Pragmatic abilities are selectively impaired by lesions in areas of the right hemisphere (dyshyponoia). Damage to the limbic system, causing lack of motivation, leads to loss of speech in the absence of impairment to language per se (dynamic aphasia). Each neurofunctional system is necessary but none is sufficient for normal verbal communication. As we are about to see in more detail below, all these systems are connected to a conceptual system where thoughts originate before they are encoded into language for production and where meanings are decoded into conceptual representations for the comprehension of perceived utterances or written text. 1.2. Neurofunctional Components of the Bilingual Cognitive System First, a historical note: The three-store hypothesis considered here originates in the psycholinguistic studies of the seventies that investigated whether the two languages of bilingual speakers are represented in two

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memory stores or one (McCormack 1977). Typically, bilingual subjects would be trained on a particular task in one language and then tested in the other. If the results differed from the same-language control condition (i.e., practice in the other language did not facilitate performance), they were interpreted as supporting the two-store hypothesis; if the results were similar, they were interpreted as supporting the one-store hypothesis. Experimental results were inconsistent, with some interpreted as supporting the one-store, and others the two-store option. Kolers (1968) reported that his own findings were not consistent with either hypothesis: the results were too similar to support the two-store hypothesis but not sufficiently alike to support one common store. He concluded that the actual situation of a bilingual person combines aspects of both hypotheses. In order to solve this problem, Paradis (1978) proposed to account for Kolers’ findings by postulating not one, not two, but three stores: one for each language, and one common system containing conceptual representations corresponding to both languages. The two language stores were later considered to be represented as subsystems of the language neurofunctional system (Paradis 1981). Lexical semantic representations of L1 and L2 words differ and are stored separately (each in its subsystem); conceptual representations corresponding to L1 and L2 words are also at least partially different, but within a common system. Lexical items rarely have the same meanings as their translation equivalents (Paradis 1997), besides having different syntactic connections within the language subsystem. Even when they have identical meanings, the lexical meanings are redundantly represented in each subsystem. Lexical items, including their meanings, are represented as part of their respective language subsystem and the conceptual feature groupings that correspond to the semantic constraints on lexical items of each language are represented in a common conceptual system. The three-store hypothesis holds that concepts are dissociable from language: aphasics retain concepts, even those that were acquired through language. Global aphasics behave intelligently; for example, they may beat you at chess and solve algebraic equations. Linguistically delimited concepts (i.e., English- or French-specific concepts), once they have been acquired, are stored independently of the language that

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shaped them, though they retain all their language-specific idiosyncrasies, and they remain available after the loss of language. Lexical meaning representations differ from conceptual representations in that the former are part of the language system, the latter, of the conceptual system; hence, the three-store hypothesis. Unfortunately, there is some confusion in the literature regarding the use of the terms semantic and conceptual. Often the term conceptual refers to the lexical semantic meaning and semantic refers to the conceptual level. Meaning representations are often called “conceptual” representations because most models do not distinguish between word meaning and concept (De Groot 2002; see Francis 2005 for a discussion of the confusion). But “the fact that pinpointing the difference between semantic and conceptual knowledge is tedious” (De Groot 2002: 48) should not cause us to ignore this distinction, which is supported by clinical studies. Certain types of aphasia that affect lexical semantic representations do not necessarily affect conceptual representations (Alajouanine & Lhermitte 1964; Lecours & Joanette 1980; Marshall 1984; Gurd & Marshall 1993). In the common conceptual system, conceptual features are grouped together in accordance with the specific lexical semantic constraints on words from each language and the relevant pragmatic circumstances at the time of their use. To the extent that lexical constraints are similar in the two languages, the same conceptual representations will be activated; to the extent that they differ, so will their conceptual representations. The lexical semantic constraints may have the greatest impact on language-derived conceptualization, though features of grammar also convey specific conceptual representations (as emphasized by Pavlenko 1999, 2000). Kecskes and Papp’s (2003) common underlying conceptual base (CUCB) corresponds to Paradis’ third store, the nonlinguistic cognitive system where conceptual features that conform to the lexical semantic constraints of each language are grouped together. As in the threestore hypothesis, it is in the CUCB that thoughts originate and are then mapped onto linguistic signs to reach the surface through one of the language channels. This is done directly: the perceived acoustic or graphic characteristics of the words automatically access the corresponding concepts, that is, an L1 or L2 concept depending on the word that has been

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heard or seen, just as, in unilinguals, two different words will each evoke their particular concepts (Paradis 2004). 1.3. The Subsystems Hypothesis The neurofunctional system underlying implicit linguistic competence contains one subsystem for each language acquired by the speaker. Each subsystem contains its own phonology, morphosyntax, semantics and lexicon. The language subsystems, including their lexicons, are neurofunctionally distinct, but not stored in separate cerebral areas. Rather, the neural circuits that subserve them, while distinct, are intertwined within the same gross anatomical area (Roux et al. 2004). The two languages never form a common system at any level of structure or at any time in development. At the phonological level, even when a person speaks L2 with a strong foreign accent, the phonemes of L2 are not the phonemes of L1: even though the values, as represented in the speaker’s brain, may be closer to L1 than to L2 values, the two systems are independent and may be selectively impaired by pathology (Alajouanine et al. 1949). The same goes for syntax, morphology and lexical semantics, no matter how many features of L1 are found in the L2 system, or feature values closer to L1 than is appropriate. In cases of full L1 values, the feature is then redundantly represented in the L2 subsystem. The subsystems hypothesis holds that the two language subsystems are totally separated (i.e., no part of any subsystem shares an item with another subsystem). If they can be said to share a feature; that is, a feature of L1 that is identical to its counterpart in L2, either deviantly or legitimately when the same parameter happens to be implemented in both languages, it can only mean that the same feature is redundantly represented in each respective subsystem. In this view, Cook’s (2003: 8) partial integration Figure 1 may correspond to an abstract schematic diagram of the meanings of words. But, though it may correspond to representations at the extralinguistic neurofunctional conceptual level, it does not correspond to the way any grammatical or lexical component of two languages is represented in Paradis’ model of the bilingual brain, with which it is presented as being compatible.

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Language A

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Language B

Figure 1. Partial integration (after Cook’s [2003] Figure 1.3 B).

1.4. Redundancy of Representation in each Subsystem From the perspective of a neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism, even an interlanguage, or transitory grammar, to the extent that it is internalized as implicit competence, is stored in the L2 subsystem in the same way as a bona fide L2, and continues to change and develop within that subsystem in the same way that any language develops. However, the sequence of development may differ from the L1’s, and many L1 or other deviant features may fossilize and remain part of the speaker’s L2 grammar. The “deviant” grammar is stored like any other grammar. The nature of what is represented in the L2 implicit linguistic competence subsystem is identical to that of any native language, namely parameters of linguistic principles of the relevant sort (phonological, syntactic, morphological, lexical semantic) – whether appropriate for the particular language or not. Indeed, there is no reason to suppose that the brains of bilingual speakers, whose L2 implicit grammar incorporates more features identical to those of their L1 than to the grammar of L2 native speakers, should in any way represent and/or process their languages differently than the brains of speakers whose grammars legitimately incorporate those features. There is no reason for the brain to treat an illicit parameter differently from a correct one. Two languages may legitimately contain the same parametric instantiation of certain grammatical principles, while other parameters differ. The actual number of similar features in two languages

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is a mere historical accident and it changes over time. Let us consider a concrete example. If the main clause of a sentence is in the future, then clauses starting with when, in some languages, must use either (1) the present tense (as in English) or (2) the future tense (as in French); in other languages, one may (3) optionally use one or the other (as in Greek). The brain will develop a subsystem for L2 in which any one of these options is implemented. In some cases, it will actually correspond to the correct form in that particular language, in others it will not. Thus, let us assume that an English speaker acquires French imperfectly and systematically uses the present instead of the future tense in the “when” clause. That parameter will be inappropriately represented the same way in both the French and English subsystems, just as it would be legitimately represented in English and Italian. There is thus no reason to suspect that a subsystem that contains an instance of static interference from L1 should differ in its representation or processing from a system that legitimately contains the same feature in both subsystems. Cross-linguistic cognates are also quasi-redundantly represented in each subsystem, for at least three reasons: (1) A particular word may be available to a bilingual aphasic patient, but not its cognate in the other language (the same argument that rules out the extended and the tripartite systems – see Paradis 1981); (2) lexical meanings, as well as pronunciations, are very rarely identical; and (3) lexical items and their cognate translation equivalents have different intralingual connections and often possess different syntactic characteristics. For example, the verb “telephone” requires a direct object in English but an indirect object in French; “information” is a mass noun in English, but a count noun in French. At the conceptual level, the amount of overlapping features in the conceptual representation, for cognate and noncognate translation equivalents alike, will correspond to the actual degree of similarity in meaning between a word and its translation equivalent. 2. T H E N AT U R E O F R E P R E S E N TAT I O N S , T H E I R O R G A N I Z AT I O N , A C Q U I S I T I O N A N D U S E A R E THE SAME

Bilinguals have a conceptual base that is qualitatively identical to that of unilinguals. Only the number of language-governed concepts

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and their exact boundaries differ. Bilingual memory does not differ in kind or in organizational principles from unilingual memory. It can be said that “bilingual memory differs from monolingual memory to a great extent” (Kecskes & Papp 2003: 258) only with regard to what is represented and processed, not how. The common conceptual base of bilinguals is identical in nature, organization, development and use, to the unilingual conceptual base. It is simply bigger – at least in most cases (a unilingual literature professor may have more language-based concepts than a bilingual shepherd). The content of representations may be impoverished and/or deviant with respect to native speakers’ norms but it is stored and processed in the same way as any “correct” language-governed concept. Therefore, the cognitive functioning of bilinguals is identical to that of unilingual speakers. If, by “cognitive functioning” one means the actual contents of the ideas and values processed in the speaker’s mind, then the difference between the cognitive functioning of a unilingual and a bilingual speaker is of the same kind as that between a native Hungarian speaker and a native American English speaker: What they think may differ but the principles that underlie the thinking and feeling processes are the same. As Kecskes and Papp (2003: 258) rightly assert, “Each language used as an L1 of a community has a system of expectations and traditions.” But unilinguals living in a bicultural environment also have two sets of expectations and traditions for their native words and expressions, depending on the context of their use. “Liberal” may be considered a compliment in one group, an insult in another. Just as one can predict that a German speaker’s semantic boundaries of the word Freund (an intimate friend) will change after living in California for 20 years, where you introduce someone you have met at the bus stop 15 minutes ago as “my friend Bill,” one can expect the notion of cold weather to go through the same type of rearrangement when an English speaker moves from northern Vermont to Florida. Under the influence of the frequent use of the other language, concepts are modified in bilinguals to include or exclude a feature or features (i.e., static interference) in the same way that concepts are modified by new experience in unilinguals.

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2.1. Similarity in Nature The nature of what is represented is the same whether concepts originate in one language or a blend of two or more. The fact that a concept has been derived from L2 semantic constraints does not alter its characteristics: it is still made up of conceptual features, behaves in the same ways when activated, and combines with other concepts to give rise to mental representations. The fact that L1- and L2-derived concepts are part of a CUCB does not mean that translation equivalents have identical conceptual representations, in that the meanings of a word and of its translation equivalent correspond to one and the same concept. Far from it. Concepts in one language and their closest equivalents in another are rarely, if ever, identical; they overlap but do not share exactly the same contents (see Paradis 1997). Note that we should distinguish between the linguistic concept (i.e., the complete conceptual representation corresponding to the lexical semantics of an item) and the conceptual representation evoked by the utterance of a word in context – those (and only those) relevant features of the linguistic concept that are activated as restricted by the situation and the linguistic context in which the word is uttered. Not all features of a concept are activated whenever a word is used. What is activated by any given use of the word is modulated by the various pragmatic circumstances, the mental set, etc.; you never activate all the conceptual features associated with a given concept, only those relevant to the situation. Thus, in some cases, when the differences are not relevant in the context, the very same features may be activated when either an L1 word or its translation equivalent is used. For example, if on the tennis court I say “pick up all the balls” or “ramasse toutes les balles,” balles and balls refer to the same objects and the addressee will pick up all the tennis balls that are on the court. But, if in the gym I say “apporte-moi toutes les balles qui sont dans le placard,” the addressee will bring a different set of objects than if I ask for “all the balls that are in the closet.” In the latter case, basketballs and soccer balls will be brought along with the small baseballs and tennis balls that would be brought following the French request.

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The same L1 word may activate different concepts depending on the pragmatic situation. In a sarcastic remark, a word will be interpreted to mean the opposite of its usual meaning. Moreover, unilinguals cannot really be said to have, in contrast to bilinguals, a qualitatively different “one-language-governed conceptual base” (Kecskes & Papp 2003: 249), because many of the concepts in the CUCB do not correspond to a word or expression in L1. This could be true only in a theory of radical language determinism, in which no concept existed without a corresponding word as its source. Yet, children clearly have many concepts long before they acquire their first word. The unilinguals’ underlying conceptual base is simply quantitatively smaller, since it has fewer possible featural groupings that correspond to words. 2.2. Similarity in Organization As proposed earlier, bilinguals have two independent language subsystems, but both of them have access to the same underlying conceptual base where conceptual meanings group together certain features that correspond, say, to the word glass, another set, with considerable overlap, that corresponds to the word goblet, and yet another, also with considerable but not total overlap, that corresponds to the word verre. This is what it means to have a common conceptual system, independent of language and languages. The conceptual system is in a constant state of flux as it incorporates new insights from experience and new meanings for words (i.e., words that have different meanings in different contexts), as well as meanings for new words in both L1 and L2. Concepts of the two languages coexist and interact in the bilingual individual’s CUCB (the third store) in the same way that different concepts of the same language and those shaped by experience coexist and interact in the unilingual conceptual system. The contents differ, not the nature of the representations or the kind of cognitive functioning. With different material, a bilingual speaker functions cognitively in the same manner as a unilingual speaker. Note that no two unilinguals possess identical concepts, either. The difference is one of degree; it concerns only the content of representations (i.e., the specific combination of conceptual features), not the way concepts are acquired, formed, used or

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stored. In this respect, bilinguals differ from unilinguals no more than unilingual English speakers differ from unilingual Spanish speakers. L1 concepts are more easily modified by L2 concepts (and the reverse), than grammatical elements are, because they are sustained by declarative memory. The lexical semantic constraints on the use of a word, and consequently its corresponding conceptual representation, are generally known explicitly. For instance, one can demonstrate that one knows the meaning of the word mug by identifying an actual object: “Yes, this is a mug; no, this is not a mug.” Of course, there may be borderline cases: “This is not quite a mug.” It is nevertheless perceived as a mug-like cup or bowl and will be so described, for instance, when trying to explain to friends back home the type of large breakfast cup from which one drank one’s café au lait in France. What is represented may differ from target-language native speakers’ representations but the principles of conceptual organization and processing are the same. The content may be impoverished and/or deviant with respect to native speakers’ norms, but it is stored and treated in the same way as any bona fide language-specific concept. The conceptual system is affected by a new language in the same way as it is affected by the encounter with new L1 words and new real-world experiences. L2 words activate a different set of conceptual features than their L1 translation equivalents in the same way that L1 synonyms do. In the bilingual conceptual system, the number of concepts changes; their organization does not. 2.3. Similarity in Development The way the conceptual base of a second language develops does not differ qualitatively from the analogous process in the first language. Unilingual individuals continuously increase their conceptual base as they encounter new experiences and learn new words of their L1. The experience of learning new L2 words with their corresponding conceptual representations is not different in kind. It simply adds new featural groupings in the same way as learning new synonyms in the L1. There is thus no need to postulate an additional conceptual system for L2 – only an extended underlying conceptual base, extended in the same way that the unilinguals’ conceptual base is extended over a lifetime, as our

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knowledge of the world – and, to some extent, of our native language – increases. With prolonged language contact, concept boundaries may change so that L1 words no longer activate their original conceptual meanings, but incorporate some or all conceptual features of their L2 equivalents. Semantic constraints on the use of L1 words become blurred. Faux-amis from L2 will creep into L1; For example, an English speaker living in a French environment will call a lecture a conference, or a less colloquial calque will be used – the speaker will tell a friend that his flight was annulled – rather than cancelled. This follows the same pattern as the change in unilingual concept boundaries consequent to new experiences. To speak of the emergence of the CUCB when the learner has reached a certain threshold of L2 proficiency (Kecskes & Papp 2003: 250) might imply that a new system is developed, when in fact it is the existing conceptual system that gradually increases as boundaries of some L1 concepts start to gain and/or lose some features of previous L1-driven concepts and new L2 concepts are formed. The CUCB cannot be an additional “container” that would hold those L1 and L2 concepts whose meanings start to overlap improperly. The common conceptual system is a single system that contains unchanged L1 concepts, L1 concepts modified by L2 contamination, native-like L2 concepts, and L2 concepts modified by L1 contamination. All these combinations of conceptual features are represented in the CUCB and behave in all respects in exactly the same way any concept does. At early stages of development, the concept that corresponds to the L2 word may coincide with that of its L1 equivalent: the features that correspond to the L2 word start off by being identical to those of the corresponding L1 word. With time, the overlap ceases to be complete as some features are deleted and others added to a concept that eventually corresponds more closely to the actual native L2 conceptual representation of the L2 word. Thus, at first, the English speakers’ concept of balle may totally correspond to that of ball (and this concept is activated whether ball or balle is used), but as time goes by, the learner finds out that balle is used only for balls small enough to be held in one hand, and the feature [+small] is added to the L2 concept balle. The grouping of conceptual features for ball and balle is no longer identical, and the

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speaker learns the word ballon to refer to large balls. In a similar way, for the native English toddler, there comes a time when doggie takes on additional features and is no longer applicable to all four-legged animals, and the word cat is learned. The reverse may also occur in both bilingual and unilingual situations, when a new concept moves from the specific (one’s own house pet) to general (all dogs). Cook (2003) considers that the notion of the integration continuum is compatible with Paradis’ neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism in unifying both L1 and L2 within the same architecture of the mind, but that it differs in extending the continuum to concepts, whereas the neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism “has a single unvarying conceptual system” (p. 11). In the proposed theory, the bilingual conceptual system has indeed a single conceptual system, but it is not unvarying. Like the unilingual conceptual system (and perhaps even to a greater extent), it varies over time as new L2 concepts are incorporated. Again, the variation is in the contents, not in the nature or processing, of the representations. The process of development is the same. 2.4. Similarity in Processing In the bilingual language processing device, both language channels interact during production, resulting sometimes in mixing, switching, modifications and temporary dominance of either language (Kecskes & Papp 2000). Similarly, sociolinguistic and/or dialectal registers may interact in unilingual processing. As Labov (1972) pointed out, there are no single-style speakers. Every speaker encountered by his research team showed a shift in some linguistic variables as the context changed. Unilinguals switch registers when addressing different people in different circumstances. Unilingual parents do not speak to their children at bedtime in the same register as they speak to a judge in a courtroom. A change of register involves a change in lexicon, morphosyntax and even pronunciation – as does switching between languages. Unilinguals can mix registers the way bilinguals mix languages for a number of purposes, including jocularity. For example, a French person may say to a friend: “Hier j’ai rencontré Danielle et nous papotâmes” (Yesterday I met Danielle and we chatted). The verb papoter (familiar register) is used in the simple past (literary formal register), resulting in the intended

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comical effect. Unilinguals can suffer from interference between registers, inadvertently using a more frequently used familiar term in a formal conversation. Unilinguals can paraphrase. Paraphrasing is a phenomenon which does not differ in kind from translation, that is, saying more or less the same thing with different words and/or morphosyntax, even pronunciation. For example, baby or pet talk uses different intonation, pitch frequencies, and even, on occasion, different phonemes from speech to adults. Cook (2002: 5) raises the objection that L1 paraphrasing seldom leads to social roles such as acting as an intermediary between two other people. In other words, circumstances are such that unilingual speakers are not commonly placed in situations where they need to paraphrase what one person said so that another may understand. Nevertheless, parents often do translate adult speech that is addressed to their child by strangers into motherese. Some bilinguals, on the other hand, are seldom called upon to translate. They have little opportunity to do so, but they could if necessary. This is the point: the functions of mixing, switching and translating are available to unilinguals and bilinguals alike and some bilinguals make more extensive use of these functions. The difference is only in the actual frequency of use. Such frequency varies not only among bilinguals but among unilinguals as well: day care attendants need to paraphrase more often than people without children; lawyers need to paraphrase a judge’s statement for the benefit of their clients. There is no need to postulate a neurofunctional mechanism that would sprout only in bilingual brains to fulfill a new function. Another situation sometimes considered unique to bilinguals is that, when the expectation is that Language A will be spoken but, in fact, it turns out that Language B is being used, comprehension may be momentarily blocked. In the same way, unilinguals sometimes fail to understand what is said if they expect their interlocutor to speak about one thing but in fact that person starts speaking about another. Mindset affects comprehension in both unilinguals and bilinguals. There is therefore no reason to expect that anything in the bilingual brain should differ in kind from anything found in the unilingual brain. The mechanisms for comprehension and production in the bilingual brain do not need any additional component that is not already present

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in the unilingual person’s brain. The only difference is the extent to which unilinguals and some bilinguals make use of the various parts of the verbal communication system, but all such parts are available to bilinguals and unilinguals alike. The neurofunctional system need not be organized differently depending on whether an individual speaks one or more languages. Between different types of bilinguals and unilinguals, what changes is not the type of mechanism that sustains implicit linguistic competence or conceptual representations but the individual’s grammar; not the way in which the two languages are represented, but what is represented; not the organization of the system but its contents. The same is true of the CUCB: its nature and functioning principles are identical to those at work in the unilingual conceptual system. 2.5. Similarity in Handling Cultural Values Speakers may be aware of the different cultural values conveyed by each language and may, within this set, choose to adopt those specific to one or the other, or to compromise between the two, irrespective of the language they use. This is a question of contents rather than organization into one or two systems. Unilinguals may also choose implicitly or explicitly to accept or reject the values conveyed by their language community. For example, a French-English bilingual, even though a native speaker of French, may nevertheless consider that the Anglo-Saxon way of speaking in turns in a debate is preferable to the Latin way where all participants speak at the same time. Speakers may select from the values attached to each of their languages the ones they consider preferable, or modify them somewhat. They may also choose to behave one way in an L1 environment and another in an L2 environment, just as unilinguals adjust their behavior (linguistic or otherwise) to the company of close friends and relatives on the one hand, and to more formal company on the other. Bilingual/bicultural speakers thus have three choices. They may accept some of the traits of the other culture, choose a middle ground between L1 and L2 cultures, or stick to their L1 values as embedded in the connotations. Furthermore, they may have no preference, in which case they may use the L1 and L2 words with their respective

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language-specific connotations. There is no need to postulate a separate conceptual store for each of these situations; not to mention the fact that these behaviors are on a continuum, depending on a variety of circumstances. Nor does the conceptual system alter the way it acquires and handles values. To the extent that connotations are an integral part of the languagespecific meaning of a word, that is, are conventionalized and usually listed in standard dictionaries, they are stored as part of the language subsystem lexicon in the left hemisphere, and thus accessible to right-hemisphere-damaged patients who have difficulty with nonconventional connotations, figurative meanings and metaphors. Native speakers will naturally use the words of their language with their standard meanings, including their conventional connotations. To the extent that these connotations are absent from the conceptual system of L2 speakers of that language, there is interference in the same way as with the names of concrete objects (e.g., the meanings of balle, poil, chaise, chat vs. ball, hair, chair, cat). This simply means that the lexical constraints and corresponding conceptual representations have an impoverished content; the appropriate connotations are missing. Different languages have coined specific conventional metaphors, but the principle of a metaphor is independent of specific languages. Here again, the only difference is a question of what specific meaning is metaphorically attached to a specific expression in a particular language. There is nothing fundamentally different about storing an English-specific metaphor or a Russian-specific metaphor. Their translation into the other language may yield nothing but the literal meaning, but English-Russian bilingual speakers are aware of the metaphorical meaning of each. To the extent that speakers have not incorporated the cultural aspects of a foreign language into their repertoire, they may translate an L1 metaphor into the L2 language, and fail to communicate, as one fails to communicate when a linguistic parameter has not been internalized, reflecting static interference. If bilingual speakers are uncomfortable with the particular connotation of a word or expression in one of their languages, they will simply avoid using it or use a non-offensive translation equivalent (i.e., a word that, in the other language, does not have the unwanted

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connotation). Unilingual speakers do the same: they avoid words that they find offensive and use euphemisms or circumlocutions instead. When affectively charged words and taboo words elicit a greater autonomic activity (faster heartbeat, sweat) in speakers’ L1 than their L2 (Harris et al. 2003), it means that these words became associated with particular emotions early in life and have remained so for a long time, and links are therefore stronger than to their translation counterparts. However, in the case of attrition of L1 after decades of life in an L2 environment, the L2 emotive associations may strengthen over time – again, a quantitative difference that mirrors the variance in L1 situations. Different individuals speaking the same language in the same cultural environment will assign different emotive strengths to various words on the basis of their own personal circumstances. This in no way denies that different languages are bearers of different cognitive perspectives and different world views. Each of a bilingual speaker’s languages affords him or her a specific perspective. Both perspectives are acquired through communication in each language environment, or consciously learned from instruction. This is not incompatible with a CUCB: the bilingual individual simply has more choices (a quantitative difference). Unilingual speakers will likewise encounter different perspectives, and face the same choices, when they share the experience of two groups at opposite ends of the sociocultural and/or political spectrum – say, farm-hand paternal grandparents and aristocratic maternal grandparents. 2.6. Apparent Caveat: Late Bilinguals Late bilinguals differ from early bilinguals and unilinguals in the extent to which they rely on implicit linguistic competence, metalinguistic knowledge and pragmatics (Paradis 2004), but do not differ in terms of the type of conceptual development, representation, or functioning. It does not matter how the concepts get there, whether through language (L1, L2) or through experience. Once a conceptual representation is formed, its relevant parts are activated in the appropriate context. Late bilingual speakers’ L2 conceptual representations differ from those of native speakers of that language, but no two unilinguals

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have identical conceptual representations either, whether quantitatively or content-wise. New L2 lexical constraints delimit new concept boundaries and modify existing ones in the same way that new experiences do, including learning new L1 words. To the extent that metalinguistic knowledge is used to compensate for gaps in implicit linguistic competence, late L2 learners will differ from native speakers and early bilinguals in the degree to which the various cognitive systems are used for second language verbal communication – again, a possibly large, but still quantitative difference. Besides their reduced implicit linguistic competence in the L2, speakers may use metalinguistic knowledge in a controlled manner, thus resorting to a different grammatical system subserved by an altogether different cerebral mechanism. But at the conceptual level, since units of meaning are explicit, they do not differ from unilinguals in the nature of their representations or ways of processing. L2 words evoke their corresponding concept just as synonyms (or any two words) in one language do. In early bilinguals, two subsystems form from the start (from the time the child shows evidence of differentiating languages by using one with one set of interlocutors, the other with another set). To the extent that late bilinguals have internalized some implicit linguistic competence in L2, they possess two subsystems, even if one is less extensive than the other. At least at the beginning, and probably to some extent for the rest of their lives, their L2 will differ from their L1 in that a different neurofunctional system, subserving metalinguistic knowledge and relying on declarative memory, subserved by different cerebral mechanisms, will also be used to process L2. This mechanism is used in processing L1 as well but to a lesser extent, and usually in more formal situations. Whereas at no point and under no circumstances is there a single neurofunctional system of implicit linguistic competence common to both languages, even for those elements that happen to be identical in the two languages and will be represented once in each language subsystem, the opposite holds at the conceptual level. There is only one common conceptual system for both languages, and it works in accordance with the same principles in unilinguals and early or late bilinguals.

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2.7. Similarity in how, Dissimilarity in what is Represented It should be apparent by now that it is important to distinguish what is represented (specific phoneme, morphosyntactic rule, lexical semantic unit, concept) from the way in which it is represented (how the various mechanisms underlying the representation and processing of the different components of the verbal communication neurofunctional system operate). What is represented may differ; how it is represented and processed does not. There is even a way in which we may consider that the representations themselves, at least at the phonological, phonotactic, lexical and conceptual levels, differ only quantitatively from the unilingual norm. At first glance, they appear qualitatively different. For example, Spanish phonemes are not the same as Swedish phonemes; lexical semantic constraints on the use of a word are not the same as those on the use of its translation equivalent and do not refer to exactly the same objects, properties or events. But the apparent qualitative difference is the result of quantitative changes, changes that can be defined in terms of distance (in millimeters), duration (in milliseconds) and amplitude (in decibels) for sounds, and in terms of the number of meaningful features for concepts. The vocal apparatus is the same for all human beings. Native speakers of Oriya have the same vocal flaps, palate, lips, teeth and glottis as native speakers of English. They make different uses of the available principles of phonology – phonemes are more or less fronted, more or less labial, more or less palatalized, more or less nasal – but the underlying mechanisms for producing language sounds are the same. In production, the duration of vocal flap vibrations may vary, the proximity of the tongue to the teeth or the palate may vary, the size of the opening of the lips may vary, but all these differences are quantitative, measurable differences. The same phonotactics are available to everyone at birth. Each language to which children are exposed has its own set of phonotactic constraints, which differ from those of others. Further degrees of difference are possible within the limits of the perceptual and motor systems involved. Thus, when an L2 phonological feature is closer to L1 than appropriate, or over time an L1 feature becomes more similar to L2 values through prolonged contact with L2, the modification (“interference”)

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results in quantitative differences that give rise to a perceptible “foreign” accent. The underlying mechanisms that sustain the representation, perception and production of speech sounds are identical for these modified bilingual features. The differences result from quantitative variations in the use of these universally available devices. Even differences in phonological representations (what is represented) may be considered quantitative differences because they are the outcome of the inclusion of more or fewer traits of the relevant kind. The same argument applies to conceptual representations. Some concepts are acquired or allowed to be instantiated through experience and keep being modified by experience, that is, increasing or pruning the meaningful domain covered by each concept. Some concepts will be developed through linguistic delimitation (particular-language-driven concepts). These may modify some of the concepts acquired through experience by adding or subtracting meaningful features to constitute a new meaningful representational unit (a new concept). Modifications of this sort through exposure to two languages and/or two cultures are of the same kind as the ones that occur in unilinguals. Hence here, as for all other aspects of unidirectional or bidirectional interference, the difference is merely quantitative – more or fewer conceptual features enter into the constitution of a concept to match the corresponding lexical semantic constraints. In syntax, the differences are not in terms of more or less of a particular element, but of the use of a different parameter of a given principle – which again does not require the postulation of a bilingual-specific mechanism. The brain treats the “wrong” parameter – wrong in this particular language according to the current norm – in the same way as it would treat the correct one. If the contact between two languages is not just individual but societal, that parameter may in fact eventually become the correct one for the particular language. Even if we wish to consider representations as truly qualitatively different, they nevertheless do not differ in kind from unilingual representations in their acquisition, organization, development and functioning. The grammars of various languages differ from each other along a continuum of limited possibilities. Some of these differences are extensive,

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others are minor. Some elements are almost identical in any two given languages. Bilingual language subsystems do not contain anything different from this; there is nothing specific to bilinguals. Whether one or both of the bilingual’s language subsystems does or does not contain items that are identical to the corresponding native system does not make them different in nature; some deviant elements in one language are actually legitimate in others. Nothing sets apart the bilingual language systems except their size and actual content, though this content is of the same type and in most cases is quantitatively derived. The underlying mechanisms that sustain the various representations and their processing are the same in all individuals, whichever language or languages they speak. The only difference, for speakers with imperfect competence in a second, third or fourth language, is the degree of reliance on other systems within the verbal communicative system (metalinguistic knowledge and pragmatics) in order to compensate for an incomplete implicit linguistic competence system – but this does not affect the conceptual system subserved by declarative memory. A good analogy to clarify what is proposed here might be a computer program – say, MS Word – that underlies the typing of a document. The program is invariable, irrespective of the characteristics of the texts that are produced with its help. Documents may be typed in English or German, in 10- or 14-point characters, in Times or Courier font; parts of the text may be italicized or bolded; the text may be faultless or riddled with typos. Nevertheless, the Word program that sustains all the documents is the same. You may or may not actually use much italicization of characters or a lot of underlining, but these functions are available to you and to any user of MS Word. The texts differ only (quantitatively) in the extent of the use of the available options. To push the analogy a step further, let us assume that you type a text in German, your second language. You may systematically fail to use upper case for the initial letter of certain common nouns. Note that both upper and lower case are available and upper case is used to a certain extent when typing English. This is usually considered a transfer error (an interference) that leads to an inaccurate text from the viewpoint of standard German orthography. But all these transfers, errors and modifications are quantitative variations made possible by the underlying

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processing principles of MS Word, limited only by the nature of the program. There is little doubt that acquiring and using a second language is a dynamic process in which transfer, both linguistic and conceptual, occurs continuously between the two or more languages. However, what is involved in this dynamic process of bidirectional transfer is not the nature of linguistic and conceptual representation and processing. Linguistic representations remain parametric variations of phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical semantic principles, and concepts continue to function along the same principles of temporary groupings of meaningful features, giving rise to thoughts. The contents of grammars fluctuate, but the principles of grammar and conceptual processing are not affected. The same systems continue to function in the same way, albeit with different phonological features, morphosyntactic rules and lexical items. The difference between a unilingual and a bilingual is akin to that between a native speaker of English and a native speaker of Farsi: they both possess a language system and a conceptual system that function in accordance with grammatical structures, rules, processes and conceptual representations, respectively. In each case, what is represented and processed differs, with English grammar and English-driven concepts in one, Farsi grammar and Farsi-driven concepts in the other, and non-linguistic concepts in both. In this light, total separation and total integration (Cook 2003) can only refer to the contents of representations, not to the language system or any module of the language system or subsystems. Neurofunctionally, total separation would correspond to the dual system and integration to the extended system, both of which are rejected for empirical reasons in favor of the subsystems hypothesis (Paradis 1981, 2004). The grammatical and conceptual transfers consist of linguistic and conceptual material, respectively. The identity of the material may differ, but the nature of the material (phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, conceptual) is not affected. There is not a single function or cerebral mechanism available to bilinguals that is not also available to unilinguals; the difference is one of degree of use of the various mechanisms as well as the form of what is represented and processed.

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What is represented varies from native speaker to native speaker of the same language in some respects (especially at the conceptual level), from language to language, and from unilingual to multilingual individuals. But the difference in the latter case is no greater and is of the same kind as the difference between native speakers of Russian and of Chinese; it is not specific to bilingualism. 3. C O N C L U S I O N

The language subsystems are connected to a single conceptual system where conceptual features are grouped together in accordance with the specific lexical semantic constraints of words in each language and the relevant pragmatic circumstances at the time of their use. The conceptual base of a bilingual speaker’s L2 differs only quantitatively from that of L1: What is represented may differ from L2 native speakers’ representations but the principles of conceptual organization and processing are the same as those of L1. Phonological, morphological, syntactic, lexical and conceptual modifications due to another language and/or cultural influence bear on the contents of bilingual speakers’ relevant neurofunctional systems, not on how these contents are developed, represented or processed. Even modifications in the contents of representations are often the result of quantitative changes. The bilingual’s CUCB is larger than a unilingual’s conceptual base, but does not differ in its structure or modus operandi. At no level of language or conceptual functioning is there anything in bilinguals that would involve an entity that is not available to unilinguals. There is therefore no need to assume the existence of any kind of cerebral function or mechanism that is specific to bilingual individuals.

REFERENCES Alajouanine, T., Pichot, P., and Durand, M. 1949. Dissociation des altérations phonétiques avec conservation relative de la langue la plus ancienne dans un cas d’anarthrie pure chez un sujet français bilingue. L’Encéphale, 28: 245–265. Alajouanine, T., and Lhermitte, F. 1964. Non-verbal communication in aphasia. In de Reuck, A. V. S. and O’Connor, M. (eds.), Disorders of language. London: Churchill. 168–182.

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Cook, V. 2002. Background to the L2 user. In Cook, V. (ed.), Portraits of the L2 user. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.1–28. Cook, V. 2003. The changing L1 in the L2 user’s mind. In Cook, V. (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 1–17. De Groot, A. M. B. 2002. Lexical representation and lexical processing in the L2 user. In Cook, V. (ed.), Portraits of the L2 user. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 32–63. Francis, W. S. 2005. Bilingual semantic and conceptual representation. In Kroll, J. F., and de Groot, A. M. B. (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: psycholinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 251–267. Gurd, J. M., and Marshall, J. C. 1993. Aphasia and intelligence. In Blanken, G., Dittmann, J., Grimm, H., Marshall, J. C., and Wallesch, K. (eds.), Linguistic disorders and pathologies. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 310–317. Harris, C., Aiçiçegi, A., and Gleason, J. 2003. Taboo words and reprimands elicit greater autonomic reactivity in a first language than in a second language. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24: 561–579. Kecskes, I., and Papp, T. 2000. Foreign language and mother tongue. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kecskes, I., and Papp, T. 2003. How to demonstrate the conceptual effect of L2 on L1? Methods and techniques. In Cook, V. (ed.), Effects of the second language on the first. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. 247–265. Kolers, P. A. 1968. Bilingualism and information processing. Scientific American, 218 (3): 78–86. Labov, W. 1972. Sociolinguistic patterns. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Lecours, A. R., and Joanette, Y. 1980. Linguistic and other psychological aspects of paroxysmal aphasia. Brain and Language, 10: 1–23. Marshall, J. C. 1984. Multiple perspectives on modularity. Cognition, 17: 209–242. McCormack, P. D. 1977. Bilingual linguistic memory: the independence-interdependence issue revisited. In Hornby, P. A. (ed.), Bilingualism. New York: Academic Press. 57–66. Paradis, M. 1978. Bilingual linguistic memory: neurolinguistic considerations. Paper presented at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting, Boston, 29 December. Paradis, M. 1981. Neurolinguistic organization of a bilingual’s two languages. LACUS Forum, 7: 486–494. Paradis, M. 1997. Représentation lexicale et conceptuelle chez les bilingues: deux langues, trois systèmes. In Auger, J. and Rose, Y. (eds.), Explorations du lexique. Québec City: CIRAL. 15–27. Paradis, M. 2004. A neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pavlenko, A. 1999. New approaches to concepts in bilingual memory. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2: 208–230.

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Pavlenko, A. 2000. New approaches to concepts in bilingual memory (summary). Bilingualism:Language and Cognition, 3: 1–4 Pavlenko, A. 2005. Bilingualism and thought. In Kroll, J. F., and de Groot, A. M. B. (eds.), Handbook of bilingualism: psycholinguistic perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 433–453. Roux, F. E., Lubrano, V., Lauwers-Cances, V., Trémoulet, M., Mascott, C. R., and Démonet, J. F. 2004. Intra-operative mapping of cortical areas involved in reading in mono- and bilingual patients. Brain, 127: 1796–1810. Schmid, M. S. 2002. First language attrition, use and maintenance: the case of German Jews in anglophone countries. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Schmid, M. S. 2004. Identity and first language attrition: A historical approach. Estudios de Sociolingüística, 5: 41–58. Schumann, J. H. 1998. The neurobiology of affect in language. Language Learning, 48: Supplement 1, ix–326. Schumann, J. H., Croewell, S. E., Jones, N. E., Lee, N., Schuchert, S. A., and Wood, L. A. 2004. The neuropsychology of learning: perspectives from second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Schumann, J. H., and Wood, L. A. 2004. The neurobiology of motivation. In Schumann, J. H. et al. The neuropsychology of learning: perspectives from second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 23–42. Van Lancker, V. 1997. Rags to riches: our increasing appriciation of cognitive and communicative abilities of the human right cerebral hemisphere. Brain and Language, 57: 1–11.

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CHAPTER 2

SYNERGIC CONCEPTS IN THE BILINGUAL MIND Istvan Kecskes State University of New York, Albany

Abstract This chapter seeks answer to the following questions: How does bilingualism modify the concept-word symbiosis? How does the meaning structure (coresense, word-specific semantic properties (WSP), culture-specific conceptual properties) change when a close lexico-conceptual “equivalent” from another language is added to the existing construct? First, I will discuss the theoretical foundation of synergic concepts from several perspectives. Then, I will present a part of the results of two pilot studies whose goal was to give some empirically founded answers (however preliminary) to the questions above. Synergism comes from the Greek word “synergos” meaning working together. It refers to the interaction between two or more “things” when the combined effect is greater than if you added the “things” on their own. This is a type of “when is one plus one greater than two” effect, that is, an enhanced combined effect. It is hypothesized that in the mind of bi- and multilingual speakers there are synergic concepts that are the results of conceptual blending. Bilinguals get information about the same or similar concepts through two language channels. Because they have a common underlying conceptual base (CUCB), the blended information results in concepts that are neither exactly equal to the corresponding L1 concept nor to the corresponding L2 concept. Depending on age, socio-cultural and psychological factors, and the stage of cognitive and linguistic development of the individual, synergic concepts may be more or less beneficial for his or her cognitive development. Restructuring existing knowledge belonging to a particular label (word) in the L1 under the influence of new knowledge gained through L2 is expected to have a positive effect on the overall cognitive development, although this claim has not been fully proven yet. It is important to emphasize that synergic concepts do not mean some kind of mixture of knowledge and/or information. They are a group of concepts that are lexicalized in both languages but may have a somewhat different socio-cultural load in each language. In the CUCB of proficient bilinguals the two different socio-cultural loads are blended, which results in a conceptual domain that is not equal to the content of the conceptual domain in either language.

29 I. Kecskes and L. Albertazzi (eds.), Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism, 29–61. © 2007 Springer.

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1. T H E O R E T I C A L B A C K G R O U N D

The idea of synergic concepts derives from a cognitive pragmatic approach to bi- and multilingualism (Kecskes 2000) that assumes that semantic and conceptual representations are distinct levels of mental representation governed by the principles of two separate cognitive modules, the systems of linguistic and conceptual knowledge, respectively, and that languages in the mind have a CUCB that operates each linguistic system. 1.1. Two-Level Approach to Semantics One of the main theoretical assumptions for synergic concepts is rooted in a modified two-level approach to semantics. The two-level theory assumes that there is an intra-linguistic level of abstract semantic representations distinct from the extra-linguistic level of conceptual representations (Bierwisch 1996, 1997). As opposed to this assumption, the one-level theory, which is predominant in cognitive and computational linguistics, considers semantic representations as part of the conceptual system. Syntactic representations are directly mapped onto conceptual structures, with no separate, intra-linguistic semantic level mediating between the two kinds of representation (e.g., Jackendoff 1983). As a consequence, there is no distinction in principle between genuine linguistic knowledge about meanings and extra-linguistic, conceptually encoded knowledge (Herweg 1992). The two-level theory of semantic interpretation claims that the interpretation of a linguistic expression in a specific context of use involves the construction of a conceptual representation constrained by the semantic representation of the expression (e.g., Bierwisch 1996, 1997; Bibok & Németh 2001). Semantic and conceptual representations are distinct levels of mental representation governed by the principles of two separate cognitive modules, the systems of linguistic and conceptual knowledge, respectively. Herweg (1992) argued that semantic representations are structured configurations of semantic units which, on the one hand, are determined by the grammatical system of the language in question and, on the other hand, are grounded in – or motivated by – the conceptual system. Semantic representations are abstract representations of meaning in that

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they are not identical with specific conceptual interpretations which an expression may have in a certain context of use. Instead, they constrain the range of possible conceptual interpretations which may be contextually assigned to an expression. They do so by fixing general, abstract conditions for admissible conceptual interpretations. For instance: (1) Ms. Brown began the book in January and completed it by September. The publisher was delighted to get the manuscript so soon. It is clear that Ms. Brown began writing the book and not reading it based on the encyclopedic knowledge and context. Conceptual representations are structured configurations of conceptual units, which are mental representations of certain aspects of the external world (cf. Herweg 1992). In the semantic interpretation of a linguistic expression in a given context of use, they serve as contextually specified representations of meaning. These conceptual representations are subject to the principles of the conceptual system, which mediates between various cognitive systems (visual, auditive, motoric, motivational, linguistic, etc.). They provide the level of integration of extra-linguistic, conceptually encoded knowledge in the course of the semantic interpretation of an expression. Thus, while semantic representations are the unique level on which the principles of compositionality of meaning are operative, conceptual representations are the level on which non-compositional processes of interpretation take place. The two-level approach is important for synergic concepts because it offers a theory which recognizes the relative independence of the linguistic level from the conceptual level. This will help us explain the dual language system and the relationship between word and concept. 1.2. Dual Language The concept of “dual language” was put forward as an alternative to “interlanguage” (Kecskes 2003; Kecskes & Cuenca 2005). “Inter” means “in between”; however, the language learner is not necessarily “in between” something; rather, s/he is in the process of changing her/his

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existing conceptual and linguistic systems by adding new information which will result in qualitative changes in the original conceptual system and the eventual emergence of a new linguistic system that is rooted in one and the same conceptual system. The dual language approach is an “intake” rather than an “input” approach. It tracks changes in the conceptual system, and investigates what happens to the knowledge that enters the CUCB through the two or more language channels, and how this knowledge is put to work in the respective languages. Rather than focusing on the target language features, the dual language approach points to the process of language system construction as a result of conceptual changes, bidirectional influence between languages, and movements not only up but also down the developmental continuum. While the languages are kept separate, thoughts originating in one and the same conceptual system are fed into two different language channels. This has a profound impact both on production and comprehension: what we choose to say, how we choose to say something, how we understand things said to us, and what we consider relevant and appropriate. The fact that there is one CUCB that operates two or more different language channels leads to the development of synergic concepts which combine information coming through these language channels.

2. W O R D A N D C O N C E P T

2.1. Conceptual Development First we will have to discuss the relation between words, concepts, and the environment. It is the environment that we observe with our senses. Based on these sensory observations we make primary concepts to express and store what we sense. These primary concepts are usually concrete concepts that we develop through physical experience in the first period of our life (0–7 years or so) and label them with words that we hear in our environment. While our physical experience in the environment helps us develop basic concrete concepts that evolve as we grow older, language makes it possible for us to label these concepts and talk about them when they are not physically present. Brooks (1978) argued that the first-language learner:

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Is likely initially to acquire a concept representation based upon a particular instance. This may be the first instance encountered by the learner, and thus it may not necessarily be a “best” instance. Subsequent encounters with other instances bring about changes that may alter the stored representation of the concept toward the direction of typicality. However, such changes will continue to depend upon the particular instances and situations encountered by the learner. Because the learner does not acquire the concept at the first encounter, several other encounters with the same concept in various contexts should follow until the concept is firmly established in the learner’s mind. Gagne (1977: 99) claimed that “concrete concepts that are learned by young children are often given fuller meaning and greater precision when they are later brought to the formal level (as defined concepts) by learning in school.” Thus concepts in the L1 are not learned; rather, they grow. Conceptual content constantly changes under the influence of input and the environment. For instance “dog” indicates a concept for an animal, which has a tail and four legs, is a mammal, a domesticated animal, etc. The important thing is that a concept does not indicate only a group of sensations. Of course, we have sensations related to our concept of “dog.” However, the concept is much more than just auditory and visual sensations. We, for instance, cannot see that a certain dog is a mammal or that it is domesticated. These properties do not exist in the environment; they are part of our concept for “dog” that exists only in our mind. Based on primary concrete concepts, we elaborate all other concepts. As primary concepts usually develop through physical experience, they are normally quite well defined. However, many concepts, mainly abstract concepts derived from other concepts, are rather imprecise. Because more steps of generalization and abstraction are involved, they may become more and more blurred. In Piaget’s theory, the period from about age ten or eleven on is considered the formal operations period when genuinely abstract mental operations can be undertaken (e.g., the ability to entertain hypothetical possibilities). From the perspective of synergic concepts one of the most important things in concept development is the fact that people have different

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experiences with concepts. Consequently, words denoting concepts do not mean the same for everybody even within a relatively homogenous speech community. Many concepts that we develop, we have not learned by ourselves. They are concepts created when we hear a new word and receive some kind of explanation of the concept the word stands for. Such concepts are usually quite fuzzy. The same word will be used by different persons to label their own concepts. Any further abstractions and generalizations based on these fuzzy concepts will be quite vague. This problem appears to be even more serious in the case of bilingual development when conceptual development in the L1 is interrupted at a certain age, and input and production are shared by L2 and L1. As a consequence, psychological and socio-cultural factors start to play a decisive role in conceptual development. Several studies (cf. Birman & Trickett 2001; Persky & Birman 2005) referred to the negative effects that may accompany the process of acculturation. They may result in conceptual changes that lead to a poorly developed conceptual system. 2.2. Types of Concepts Kecskes and Papp (2000) and Kecskes (2003) argued that culture specificity is already present at the conceptual level. A significant number of concepts are culture-specific and language-specific in the sense that they are developed through one particular language channel. The CUCB contains common concepts, culture-specific concepts, and synergic concepts. In the bilingual memory there are many common concepts that are attached to both cultures, and the difference between them occurs only at the lexical level. English words such as “salt,” “water,” “ocean,” and others usually have equivalents in most other languages. Culturespecific concepts like “tapa” and “flamenco” in Spanish, or “scones” and “pudding” in English, have a specific socio-cultural load attached to them. These concepts are usually not lexicalized in the other language; rather, they are borrowed when the L2 is used. The term synergic concept denotes a unique group of bilingual concepts which are lexicalized in both languages but have a different socio-cultural load in each language. In the CUCB of proficient bilinguals the two different socio-cultural loads are blended, which results in a conceptual domain that is not equal to the content of the conceptual domain in either language. In order for

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us to understand the development of synergic concepts we will need to review the phrase “concept symbiosis.” 2.3. Stable or Dynamic? As a result of the thought-word interaction in actual speech production, thought usually undergoes several changes as it turns into speech. During this process conceptual categories (concepts) are mapped on linguistic categories (words). The problem is that there is no one-to-one relationship between concepts and words. There have been long debates about how much autonomy a lexical unit can have. Is it just a form which reflects the conceptual system and is filled with meaning when it is actually used? Or does a lexical unit have some kind of autonomy which allows for some consistency in its semantic content and a two-way relationship of semantics with both the conceptual level and the lexical level involved? Or from the perspective of the conceptual system: should concepts be considered as stable mental representations, or are they flexible, temporary, context-dependent constructions (cf. Lamberts & Shanks 1997: 3)? The relative consistency view may be represented by Vygotsky’s (1962) approach. He insisted that there is a unique symbiosis between thought and word through meaning, which is the result of their interaction. He quoted O. Mandelstam: “I have forgotten the word I intended to say, and my thought, unembodied, returns to the realm of shadows.” (Cited by Vygotsky 1962: 119). In other words, it is thought and word through which conceptualization and verbal formulation are united, and thought and word are amalgamated through word meaning. Vygotsky emphasized that the relation between thought and word is a process, “a continual movement back and forth from thought to word and from word to thought. Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them” (Vygotsky 1962: 125). Since thought and word are not cut from one pattern, there are more differences than similarities between them. Speakers cannot put thoughts on words directly like ready-made units because, as Vygotsky says, “the structure of speech does not simply mirror the structure of thought” (Vygotsky 1962: 125). Having reviewed the relevant literature, Smith and Samuelson (1997) came to a different conclusion. They reported that the traditional search

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for constant concepts has not been successful. Several studies (e.g., Malt 1994; Smith & Sloman 1994) have suggested that acts of categorization are not simply repeated; they actually vary. Different tasks and contexts appear to create different categories. Barsalou (1993) demonstrated that individual acts of categorization do not necessarily require an already represented concept. Based on these claims, Smith and Samuelson (1997) suggested a unified account of category stability and variability that is not built on the notion of fixed, represented concepts. In this chapter the word – concept relationship is understood as follows. A word (label) is a symbol that pulls together all knowledge and information that has been connected with the use of that label. It encodes the history of the use of that label in various situational contexts. The amount of this knowledge and information with its fuzzy boundaries creates what we call a concept. A concept is a construct that blends knowledge gained from actual situational contexts in an individual-centered way. The reason why concepts convey relatively similar information for a particular speech community is that community members have had relatively similar experiences with the given label in language use. As Vygotsky (1962: 83) pointed out: word meanings evolve. When a new word has been learned by the child, its development is barely starting: the word at first is a generalization of the most primitive type; as the child’s intellect develops, it is replaced by generalizations of a higher and higher type – a process that leads in the end to the formation of true concepts. 3. C O N T E X T U A L I T Y T H E O RY

3.1. No Context-free Language The development and use of synergic concepts in bilinguals’ speech production and comprehension can be understood in the framework of a contextuality theory that is built on the assumption that there is no context-free language. In order to explain this we must go back to the two-level approach to semantics, which claims the separation of the

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linguistic level from the conceptual level. This is important for synergic concepts because this distinction gives us the chance to explain the word (linguistic level) – concept (conceptual level) relationship. However, as I mentioned earlier, we must modify the two-level approach because it represents a traditional, external perspective on context. It holds that context modifies and/or specifies word meanings in one way or another. Context is seen as a selector of lexical features because it activates some of these features while leaving others in the background. This approach has led to the idea of “underspecified word meaning” that appears in several different contemporary linguistic theories, including Bierwisch’s (1996, 1997) two-level conceptual semantics, Pustejovsky’s (1995) theory of the generative lexicon, and Sperber and Wilson’s (1986, 1995) relevance theory. These approaches claim that the meaning of the lexical units is underspecified and gets conceptual specification in context. It is argued that the specification of word meaning in context is accomplished by conceptual shift, which “shifts” the core meaning into various conceptual fields, and by conceptual differentiation, which only “differentiates” the core meaning within one and the same conceptual domain, thereby yielding literal meanings. (e.g., Bierwisch 1996, 1997; Bibok & Németh 2001). The contextuality theory proposed here offers a more balanced approach in which the lexical units also function like contexts. The information encoded in a word is the result of contextual occurrences of the given word, so, in a way, words comprise their prior contextual use. As a consequence, when we utter a word it will create its own context even if it is uttered without any “context” in the traditional sense. The dynamic behavior of human speech implies a reciprocal process between language and situational context. People attempt to fit their language to a situation or context that their language, in turn, helped to create in the first place (cf. Gee 1999). The dynamic relationship of lexical units and situational context means that they mutually define and depend on each other; they both create the world and are created by it. Lexical units encode the history of their prior contextual use. There are no meanings that are context-free because each lexical item is always implicitly indexed to a prior recurring context(s) of reference.

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The conventional sign (lexical unit) is reproduced or “copied,” not discovered or invented anew by each producer-processor pair. Why is that so? Because what is encoded in a word is world knowledge, experience with the world, or abstraction based on this experience. Kecskes (2003) argued that world knowledge is available to interlocutors in two forms: as encapsulated in lexical items based on prior encounters and experience and as provided by the actual situational context framed by the given situation. Actual situational meaning is the result of the interaction of the two sides of world knowledge represented by the speaker and hearer, and the actual situational context. Violi (2000) claimed that our experience is developed through a regularity of recurrent and similar situations that we tend to identify with given contexts. Standard (prior recurring) context can be defined as a regular situation that we have repeated experience with, about which we have expectations as to what will or will not happen, and on which we rely to understand and predict how the world around us works. These standard (prior recurring) contexts are usually triggered by certain lexical items. When someone hears the word “meeting” without any further context it will still create a context in the mind. This context will be about the most frequent, familiar and conventional event encoded in the mind of that individual. When, for instance, I hear the word “meeting,” what comes into my mind first is “faculty meeting,” which is a specific instance of the type of event the word “meeting” encodes. But another individual may think of something else because of different prior experience. 3.2. Prior Experience A word encodes the history of its use in various situational contexts. This entails that a word comprises some kind of mental summary of its occurrences in a hierarchical order that depends on frequency, familiarity and conventionality. Why is this important for synergic concepts? In L2 use, prior experience attached to a particular label significantly differs from that of the native speakers. When we use a second language, prior experience with an L2 word contains the limited prior experience

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with the given label as in L2, and the prior experience with the lexical equivalent of the given L2 label in L1. For instance: (2) “school” – “escuela” When a native speaker of English learning Spanish acquires the word “escuela” as a corresponding label to the concept symbolized by the word “school” in his mind, s/he uses the conceptual load attached to the English word “school” even when s/he speaks Spanish. This conceptual load may comprise the following senses: (a) (b) (c) (d)

We did not go to school yesterday. John works for the School of Education. Ivy league schools are very expensive. and others.

However, in the Spanish sense (c) is missing. The following conversation illustrates this case: (3) American professor: So you say you went to school at Berkeley for three semesters. Spanish student: No, I went to the university at Berkeley. This conversation shows where non-native speakers usually go wrong. Lexical level equivalency does not mean conceptual level equivalency. The conceptual load attached to the word “school” in English and the equivalent lexical item “escuela” in Spanish is different. Not all senses of the English word can be found in Spanish as well. Consequently, these labels cannot function as translation equivalents in each case. This, however, does not mean that we need to develop a new concept for “escuela” when we learn Spanish. Rather, what we need to do is reconceptualize, that is, modify the content of the conceptual construct that we already have for the English word “school” in order to accommodate the new piece(s) of information. As a result we will have a synergic concept that differs from the English concept denoted by the label “school” and the Spanish concept denoted by the word “escuela.” This does not mean, however, that we have a conceptual mix; rather it is a conceptual blend.

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Blending (conceptual integration) is a general cognitive operation on par with analogy, recursion, mental modeling, conceptual categorization, and framing (Fauconnier & Turner 1998). It is dynamic, supple, and active in the moment of thinking. It yields products that frequently become entrenched in conceptual structure and grammar, and it often performs new work on its previously entrenched products as inputs. Through completion and elaboration, the blend develops structure not provided by the inputs. Inferences, arguments, and ideas developed in the blend can have an effect in cognition, leading us to modify the initial inputs and to change our view of the corresponding situations. Synergic concepts are conceptual blends that encode the history of their prior use represented by two or more labels (words) in L1 and L2 production and comprehension. 4. W H AT I S I N A W O R D ?

The dynamic model of meaning (DMM) was developed by Kecskes (2003) to explain the content and structure of lexical units. It claims that actual contextual meaning is constructed in the dynamic interplay of the conceptual system (relying on prior, encoded knowledge, blending schemes, mapping, and other cognitive operations) and the actual contextual operations triggered by the merging of lexical units and extralinguistic situational elements in action. The DMM (see Figure 1) demonstrates the two faces of word (lexical unit) meaning: coresense and consense. Coresense is a denotational, diachronic, relatively constant, and objective feature that reflects changes in the linguistic community, while consense is actual, subjective, referential, connotational, and changes according to situation and actual context. In the model, a lexical item represents world knowledge based on prior contextual experience. It is a blend of coresense (general world knowledge about the concept), WSPs1 (the lexicalized part of world knowledge), and culture-specific conceptual properties (the culture-specific part of world knowledge). 4.1. Coresense Coresense is abstracted from possible contextual occurrences of the word. It is neither conceptual nor lexical, but the interface between

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Word-specific semantic properties (WSPs) Lexical level

A c t.

C o r e s e n s e

Consense [1]

Consense [2]

Consense [n]

s i t u a t i o n a l c o n t e x t

Conceptual level

Culture-specific conceptual properties (CSCPs) Figure 1. The dynamic model of meaning.

the two levels. Coresense is not the sum of the most essential properties of the given category, but an abstraction from the most familiar, regular, typical, and (generally, but not always) frequent uses of a word. Coresense is not a pure linguistic phenomenon because it depends on extralinguistic features such as familiarity, conventionality, and frequency. It is an essential feature of the word that brings together conceptual semantic and lexical semantic information. Coresense has a unique relationship with the WSP and culture-specific conceptual properties (CSCP). WSPs link the coresense to the lexical level while CSCPs tie it to the conceptual level. CSCPs belong to

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conceptual pragmatics, while WSPs are features of the word itself, hence are a matter of lexico-semantics. As noted above, CSCPs tie coresense to the conceptual level. They are the basis for figurative meaning and the development of WSPs. CSCPs can be revealed easily if we compare words from different languages that show lexical equivalency but differ as to their CSCPs. For instance, let us take the concept denoted by the word “siesta” in Spanish and “nap” in English. “Nap,” for a native speaker of American English, refers to some sleep in any part of the day. “Siesta,” for a Spaniard, usually denotes the afternoon period from 1:00 to 4:00 when people have lunch and take a rest including some sleep. The coresense of the two words is relatively the same, there is no WSP attached to either; however, they differ in CSCPs. Not all concepts have CSCPs. For instance, the concept denoted by the English word “salt” has hardly any CSCP, nor do its lexical equivalents in other languages. CSCPs are very dynamic features of words and keep changing all the time. They are sensitive to socio-cultural changes in the given language community. CSCPs represent the cognitive base for word meaning and are responsible for changes in the coresense of a word and its word specific semantic properties. When CSCPs get fully lexicalized they turn into word specific semantic properties. This is why native speakers of English do not have to check with the conceptual system when they use words such as “chicken out,” “kidnap,” “blackmail,” etc. 4.1.1. Culture-specific conceptual properties

4.1.2. Word-specific semantic properties The term “word-specific semantic properties” (WSP) was coined by Cruse (1992) to denote specific properties that belong to the lexical rather than the conceptual level. WSPs make it possible for speakers to have alternative lexical access routes to a single concept: for instance, “run,” “dash,” and “rush”; or “sleep,” “doze,” and “nap.” Cruse (1992: 291) argued that cognitive synonyms map onto identical concepts. The meaning properties that differentiate such cognitive synonyms as “give up,” “capitulate,” “surrender,” and “chicken out” can be viewed as properties of the individual lexical units, as distinct from properties of the common concept.

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WSPs include such things as emotive coloring, stylistic value, and various kinds of contextual affinities (see Cruse 1990, for a more detailed discussion of WSPs). WSPs are the result of the recurrent use of words in particular contexts. Originally, WSPs are the results of the interplay of the lexical unit and context, and they are the best evidence for category stability and variability. They usually derive from metaphors or other figures of speech, and over time they become conventionalized. Cruse (1992) argued that words with WSPs can create a more emotive, more “colorful” context than words without WSPs. Compare the following sentences: (4) Peter gave up the race. - - - - - - - - - - -> Peter chickened out of the race. Bob repaired the car. - - - - - - - - - - - - -> Bob fixed the car. It should be emphasized that WSPs (i.e., “semantic loads”), just like CSCPs, are not mandatory features that attach to each lexical unit. There are lexical units that have neither WSPs, nor CSCPs (such as, “division,” “example,” “depart,” etc.). Actual context can suppress CSCPs but this is hardly the case with WSPs when they are encoded in the word, such as, “pass away,” “chicken out,” “dash,” and so forth. 4.2. Consense Coresense should be distinguished from consense, which is the situated, contextual meaning of a lexical unit. Coresense is the invariant, while consense represents the possible variants. Consense realizes a particular aspect or aspects of the coresense by uniting it with the appropriate WSP and/or CSCP when the word is actually uttered in a particular situation. Figure 1 demonstrates how coresense and consense fit within the DMM. As the diagram shows, coresense is the interface between the conceptual and lexical level. WSPs are links to the lexical level, while CSCPs are ties to the conceptual level. Consenses are the variations of coresense in context. The contextual interpretation of coresense is expressed in a consense connected to other consenses to form an utterance.

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4.3. The L1 Word-concept Symbiosis Changes When New Information is Added Through L2 When a Hungarian learns the English word “candy,” the most obvious lexical equivalent in Hungarian is “cukorka.” Merriam-Webster Online gives the following definition to the concept denoted by the word “candy” in English: 1: crystallized sugar formed by boiling down sugar syrup, 2a: a confection made with sugar and often flavoring and filling, b: a piece of such confection. The equivalent Hungarian word covers these meanings. However, the English word has a CSCP that is missing in the Hungarian word. The English word also comprises “chocolate.” So if someone looks for “chocolate” in a supermarket s/he’d better use the word “candy,” otherwise s/he will be directed to an aisle where baking chocolate is displayed. Consequently, a synergic concept in the mind of an English-Hungarian bilingual should contain this CSCP. The concept denoted by the word “kick off” comes from American football as its dictionary definition shows in Merriam-Webster Online: 1: to start or resume play in football by a placekick. The concept’s metaphorical domain covers the following meaning: 2a: to initiate proceedings, b: to start out : begin The CSCP comes out in the appropriate context. Compare: (5) (a) Bill kicked off the ball in the direction of the forward. (b) The president kicked off the meeting with a short speech. Learners of English usually have problems with this concept because the lexical equivalents of the word “kick off” in other languages (Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, etc.) lack the CSCP the word has in English; consequently they cannot be used with the same metaphorical sense. A well-developed synergic concept in the mind of a Hungarian learner of English should have a different metaphorical domain for the English word “kick off” and the Hungarian world “rúg.” As discussed earlier, WSPs usually derive from metaphors or other figures of speech, and over time they become conventionalized. They

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can be considered frozen metaphors that always have the same color of meaning no matter how the context changes. They usually derive from CSCPs that become lexicalized as a result of frequent recurring use. The English phrase “chicken out” is a good example. Its original meaning is rooted in the belief that chickens are cowardly animals. The metaphorical link between the source domain and target domain can be easily made: “cowards are chickens.” However, this metaphorical meaning is lexicalized to the extent that nowadays no native speaker of English will think of a chicken when s/he uses the word “chicken out.” This does not change the fact that the word form shows its etymology very clearly. According to the Diccionario Espasa Concise (Espasa-Calpe: Madrid 2000), the Spanish lexical equivalent to the word “chicken out” is “acobardarse.” The Spanish word, of course, has nothing to do with “chicken,” because in the Spanish culture that metaphor is not lexicalized the way it is in English. In the mind of an English – Spanish bilingual the synergic concept [SURRENDER] may be represented by the following lexical items (not a full list!): (6) English words: surrender, capitulate, give up, chicken out, quit Spanish words: rendir, capitular, renunciar, acobardarse, achiquitar It is not difficult to discover that some of the lexical routes are the same or very similar because the words come from the same Latin root such as “capitulate – capitular,” “surrender – rendir,” “quit – achiquitar.” However, there is no match where the words have some WSPs such as “give up,” “chicken out,” and “acobardarse.” 5. P I L O T S T U D I E S2

Two pilot studies were conducted to investigate the nature of synergic concepts and find out how the word – concept symbiosis is modified when there are two languages and cultures represented in the mind. We focused on changes in the conceptual content of certain concepts and the structure of words denoting those concepts. It is important to note that the studies have several flaws including the procedures, relatively small

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number of subjects, selection of concepts, translation of L1 words into English and others. However, they still have some significance because they have helped us identify important features of the word – concept symbiosis. 5.1. Pilot Study 1 In this study the primary focus was conceptual content. We wanted to find out how conceptual content is modified if subjects live in different socio-cultural environments. Our subjects were adults of ages 25–45. We had four groups and in each of them there were six females and six males:

5.1.1. Data collection

Group A: Bilinguals with Chinese L1 and English L2, living in the U.S. Group B: Bilinguals with Chinese L1 and English L2, living in China. Group C: Native speakers of American English, living in the U.S. Group D: Native speakers of Chinese (Mandarin), living in China. Subjects received a list of eight words belonging to different parts of speech in English: snack, night, welcome (noun), relax, wedding, ambition, honest, proud. Out of these words we focused on four labels (snack; night; wedding; ambition) denoting concepts that exist both in Chinese and American English culture. We did not tell our subjects that we focused on concepts rather than words. We used the term “word” consistently, both in the questionnaires and in conversations with the subjects. In each group subjects were expected to do the following tasks: 1. Explain in writing what the given word means to you. 2. Define whether the word denoting the concept has negative, positive or neutral connotation for you. 3. Use the word representing the concept in two sample sentences of your choice. The words were given to each subject in English only, with the exception of the Chinese monolingual group where they received the translation equivalents of the English words in Chinese.

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Data were analyzed from the following

perspectives: 1. Define the main aspects of concepts in each group. 2. Identify the common core (coresense) and CSCPs. 3. Define differences in understanding the concept in the different groups. [AMBITION] CORESENSE: Drive to succeed, reach a goal or accomplish something. Culture-specific conceptual properties highlighted in the definitions and sentences of different groups: Monolingual English: social mobility, moving ahead Monolingual Chinese: lofty ideas, hardship in society, buried in my mind Bilingual Chinese in the US: desire for success, eager to do, hardship Bilingual Chinese in China: lofty aspiration, dream, great career Definitions given by the subjects demonstrate that there is some difference in the culture-specific conceptual load attached to this word. Americans usually consider “ambition” a positive thing, while for most Chinese the word has negative connotations (Table 1). There is, however, something that we should take into account. In Chinese there are two words for the English word “ambition”: (7) “ye xin” (used in derogatory meaning): a strong and wild desire to succeed in something that is not considered positive. Table 1. Ambition

No. of subjects

Comparisons of connotations 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Positive Neutral Negative

MC

BC

BE

ME

Ambition

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“bao fu” (used positively): a strong desire for success, achievement, power or wealth. For the monolingual Chinese group we included only the Chinese word with the positive connotation. In spite of this the monolingual group mentioned mostly negative things in their definitions and sentences. Bilingual Chinese learning English in China have the most positive attitude to the concept. They seem to have modified their existing Chinese concept reflected in the answers of the monolingual Chinese group. It is interesting to note that bilingual Chinese living in the U.S. also show some change in the original conceptual structure. They identify “ambition” with success but also see the negative aspects of the concept, as their sentences and the table demonstrate. [SNACK] CORESENSE: Something light eaten between meals. Culture-specific conceptual properties highlighted in the definitions and sentences of different groups: ME: treat or reward, make you fat MC: girls, women have snacks, relieve hunger BE in the U.S: relax and enjoy BC in China: girls like snack, small food Most subjects had a neutral attitude to the concept (Table 2). However, the English monolingual group shows how people are divided about the positive or negative effect of snack. It is interesting to note that in Table 2. Snack

No. of subjects

Comparisons of connotations 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Positive Neutral Negative

MC

BC

BE

ME

Snack

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the Chinese culture having snacks is associated with women. Both the monolingual Chinese group and the bilingual Chinese group in China noted this. However, the bilingual Chinese group living in the U.S. highlighted mainly the positive side of snacking. [WEDDING] CORESENSE: Ceremony when two people are joined in marriage. Culture-specific conceptual properties highlighted in the definitions and sentences of different groups: ME: Celebration (party), tradition, sacredness, expenses MC: “enclosed city” (tie), giving money BE: differences: banquet, red packet vs. rings, church BC: differences, expenses Just like in the other two examples there is some correlation between the answers of the monolingual Chinese group and the bilingual Chinese group living in China (Table 3). In the case of this concept the difference between the two groups is minimal, which can be explained by the fact that the word refers to a strongly conventionalized concept. The bilingual Chinese in the U.S. have come closer to the monolingual English. They highlighted mainly the ceremonial part of the concept. 5.2. Pilot Study 2 The second pilot study aimed to investigate the interplay between L2 and L1 in defining concepts. Words were given to students in English Table 3. Wedding

No. of subjects

Comparisons of connotations 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

Positive Neutral Negative

MC

BC

BE

ME

Wedding

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sentences. Some of the words were given in their idiomatic use. For instance: (8) After the accident Sarah decided to break up with Bob. The police officer taught David a lesson. Subjects were expected to read the English sentences very carefully and write down a word or expression in their native tongue (L1) that comes to their mind when they see the English word in that context. Two hours later they were presented with the word selected in their L1. The subjects were asked to write a sentence in their L1 using that particular word. We sought answers to the following questions: 1. Will the subjects’ word selection in L1 be influenced by the heavily biased English context? Will they choose a close lexical equivalent in their L1 or rather they select a conceptual equivalent? 2. When subjects are presented with the L1 word selected earlier by them, will that word create an L1 context for them, or they will recall the English concept and come up with something similar to that context? 5.2.1. Data collection The subjects were seventeen graduate students with different L1s including Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Hindi and Polish. They were all between ages 22 and 30 representing both genders. Their level of English was above average because they all were enrolled in a graduate class conducted in English. The following questionnaire was used:

WHAT IS YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE? ……………………… PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES CAREFULLY. IN EACH SENTENCE THERE IS A WORD OR AN EXPRESSION UNDERLINED. PLEASE WRITE DOWN IN YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE THE WORD OR EXPRESSION THAT COMES INTO YOUR MIND SEEING THAT ENGLISH WORD IN THE SENTENCE.

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Two hours later the subjects were presented with the L1 word they selected: This is your word in L1. Please write a sentence in L1 with this word. 5.2.2. Data analysis As in the first pilot study, subjects were given words belonging to different parts of speech such as “credit,” “score,” “break up,” “lesson,” “wipe out,” “nurse,” “cup,” “traffic.” Some of the words were used in their metaphorical sense. There is no space here to present all results so I will focus only on three concepts: [score], [cup] and [lesson]. Subject responses in the tables will be given in English. Although the translations were checked by several bilingual speakers they may distort the original sense of the L1 word used by a subject. Still, even these translations can give us some idea about how bilingual speakers think about the given concepts. [SCORE] The sentence with this word “The game just started and there is no score yet” was heavily biased for sport. We wanted to see whether speakers of different languages would keep this sense of the word in their responses. It is clear from the responses given in Table 4 that the concept exists in the cultures represented by the respondents. All sentences in the different languages referred to the sport aspect of the concept, which means that the subjects kept the sense in which the word was used in English. There are only two exceptions: one Spanish and one Korean subject used the concept in an educational sense. Differences occurred in the type of sports the subjects associated the concept with. For instance, a Hindi respondent referred to cricket scores, and a Pole mentioned football (meaning “soccer”). [CREDIT] The sentence with this word “How many credits did you get?” (Table 5) was neutral contextually. It could trigger basically any aspect of the concept including education, sport or banking. The table shows that the educational aspect prevailed across cultures. This may be due to the fact that most of the respondents are or used to be students not long ago, so they had this common prior experience.

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Word in L1: score Sentence in L1: I received a low grade for physical education.

Word in L1: points Sentence in L1: By how many points did you win?

Word in L1: number Sentence in L1: In what number is the cricket match?

Word in L1: final score Sentence in L1: We could guess a game score.

Hindi

Polish Word in L1: score a goal Sentence in L1: There is no score a football game.

Word in L1: score Sentence in L1: The coach wasn’t satisfied with the scores of the ball game.

Chinese Word in L1: score/points Sentence in L1: In this game, there is a big difference between the two scores.

Word in L1: points gained Sentence in L1: At the Korean-Japanese soccer game, Koreans gained one point and won the game 1-0.

Korean

Speaker 2 Word in L1: points Sentence in L1: We don’t have enough point required for the test yet.

Speaker 1

Spanish Word in L1: score Sentence in L1: Anais scored 3 points last Sunday in basketball.

L1

Word in L1: win points Sentence in L1: How much was the total score of the game?

Word in L1: score Sentence in L1: Our tennis team went up by 2 times what it was before.

Word in L1: scoreboard Sentence in L1: The scoreboard of the game is not ready yet.

Speaker 3

Word in L1: score Sentence in L1: How many scores do they get?

Word in L1: points Sentence in L1: The game finished with 13 points.

Speaker 4

Table 4. The game just started and there is no score yet

Word in L1: score Sentence in L1: Both teams were not able to score.

Word in L1: no response Sentence in L1: no response.

Speaker 5

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Word in L1: credit Sentence in L1: How many credits are you taking this semester? Word in L1: number Sentence in L1: How much marks did you get in your exam?

Chinese Word in L1: credit Sentence in L1: I have completed all my credits.

Word in L1: not given Sentence in L1: How many points in this subject?

Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: I got two credits for selling a lot of newspapers.

Hindi

Polish Word in L1: bank credit Sentence in L1: How much money did the bank allow you to take?

Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: How many credits are you taking?

Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: How many credits are you taking this semester?

Korean

Speaker 2 Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: I need to get 64 credits to graduate as a chef.

Speaker 1

Spanish Word in L1: not given Sentence in L1: The credits at the university are very expensive.

L1

Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: I have taken 12 credits.

Word in L1: credit (as in credit card) Sentence in L1: You have to build your credit to get a credit card.

Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: I have 49 credits at the university.

Speaker 3 Speaker 4

Word in L1: school credits Sentence in L1: How many credits have you taken so far?

Word in L1: credits Sentence in L1: How many credits did you get last semester at the university?

Table 5. How many credits did you get?

Word in L1: school credits Sentence in L1: I signed up for 9 credits this semester.

Word in L1: credits/classes Sentence in L1: How many classes are you taking this semester?

Speaker 5

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[LESSON] This word was used in its metaphorical sense in the following sentence: “The police officer taught David a lesson.” (Table 6) Out of the seventeen subjects, eight used the word in its literal sense, and the others tried to keep the figurative sense used in the English sentence. In this case individual learner differences play an important role because the figurative use of the word depends mainly on the bilingual speaker’s familiarity with this figurative sense. The absence or presence of a similar figurative sense attached to the L1 lexical equivalent also was an important factor. All Spanish speakers but one used an equivalent word in its literal sense, while four out of five Korean subjects understood the figurative sense of the word and attempted to reconceptualize it according to their L1. 6. D I S C U S S I O N

The results of the pilot studies demonstrated that the conceptual system is, to some extent, affected by the new language. The content of existing L1 concepts was modified when subjects lived in different socio-cultural environments. Modification mainly occurred in the CSCPs. The second pilot study showed that the L1 core conceptual content is strong even in fluent bilinguals. It affects how bilingual speakers use synergic concepts, and what aspects of the synergic concepts they highlight in language production. The use of synergic concepts and adjustments to the aspects of the conceptual content depend on several socio-cultural and individual factors that belong to conceptual socialization (Kecskes 2003). The development of the CUCB goes together with conceptual socialization, which refers to the transformation of the conceptual system that undergoes characteristic changes to fit the functional needs of the new language and culture. During the process of conceptual socialization the L1-dominated conceptual base is being gradually restructured, making space for and engaging with the new knowledge and information coming through the second language channel. This leads to the gradual development of a conscious awareness of how another culture is different from one’s own culture, the ability to reflect upon this difference in language production, and the development of an identity that is the reflection of

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Word in L1: give a lesson Sentence in L1: That policeman is scolding the pedestrian who violated the law.

Word in L1: lessons Sentence in L1: The teacher gave a lesson to the whole class strictly. Word in L1: to teach a lesson Sentence in L1: Good! He learned his lesson. Word in L1: a lesson Sentence in L1: I have been taking an English class lately.

Word in L1: education Sentence in L1: Children go to school to get an education.

Word in L1: moral lesson Sentence in L1: This time I didn’t get a ticket, I got a lesson.

Hindi

Polish

Speaker 3

Chinese Word in L1: give a lesson Sentence in L1: The parents’ ideas about educational opportunities gives the child a good lesson.

Speaker 2 Word in L1: lesion Sentence in L1: During the tennis game I got a leg injury [lesion]. Word in L1: warning Sentence in L1: The teacher gave him a warning.

Speaker 1

Spanish Word in L1: lesson Word in L1: lesson Sentence in L1: Elizabeth Sentence in L1: My gave me a lesson yesterday brother takes tae after school. kwon do lessons. Korean Word in L1: to discipline, Word in L1: class, teach a lesson lesson Sentence in L1: You learn Sentence in L1: It is to not play with matches something you learn only after burning through class yourself. Only personal experience. experience teaches you a lesson.

L1 Speaker 4

Word in L1: discipline Sentence in L1: The police officer was disciplining David.

Word in L1: lesson Sentence in L1: I’ll help you learn the lesson.

Table 6. The police officer taught David a lesson

Word in L1: to teach, to educate Sentence in L1: Juan’s mother punished him. Word in L1: lecture Sentence in L1: That teacher’s lecture was great.

Speaker 5

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the dual culture. Examples in the first pilot study demonstrated that bilingual Chinese subjects modified their perception of the concepts “ambition,” “snack,” and “wedding.” They were ready to amalgamate American cultural information with existing Chinese understanding of the concepts. I use the term “conceptual socialization” to distinguish the process from “language socialization,” (cf. Ochs 1988; Willett 1995; Mitchell & Myles 1998) which has its roots in anthropological linguistics. Language socialization research represented by a number of studies (cf. Ochs & Schieffelin 1984; Ochs 1988; Willett 1995; Platt & Trudi 1997) emphasizes that language and culture are inseparable because they are acquired together: each supports the development of the other. Ochs’ and Schieffelin’s work has focused on L1 development. There are very few studies that extend the paradigm to second language acquisition (i.e., Willett 1995; Platt & Trudi 1997). Willett (1995) conducted a longitudinal study with young classroom learners of ESL in an elementary school with an international intake. Based on her results she argued that language socialization is a complex process in which participants construct and evaluate shared understandings through negotiation. This process leads to changes not only in their identity but also in social practices. Conceptual socialization broadens the scope of the paradigm of language socialization, which has its main focus on language developmental issues. Conceptual socialization differs from language socialization in that it emphasizes the primacy of mental processes in the symbiosis of language and culture, and aims at explaining the bidirectional (or tri- or x-directional) influence of the two or more languages in bi- and multilingual development. The process of conceptual socialization is strongly tied to the emergence of the CUCB that is responsible for the operation of two language channels. New knowledge and new information are processed through existing knowledge. The language learner can pick up a word or a fixed expression as a functional unit based on observations of use. What s/he cannot pick up, however, is the “load,” the CSCP that that expression may carry. This fact is crucial for the development of synergic concepts. Conceptual socialization has two sides which are inseparable: a skill side and a content side. They are two sides of one and the same phenomenon. Synergic concepts are connected with the

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content side. The skill side means that conceptual socialization will be reflected in the actual language skills: structural well-formedness, language manipulation, sentence structuring and lexical quality. Changes in both sides are qualitative rather than quantitative. The skill side of the conceptual socialization process is measurable (Kecskes & Papp 2000, 2003). Changes in the content side, however, can hardly be measured. They are qualitative changes in the content of what the language learner says and the way the language learner behaves in communication. In the first pilot study bilingual Chinese speakers’ attitudes to concepts such as “ambition,” “snack,” and “wedding” differed from that of monolingual speakers. They used the concepts slightly differently in their sentences as well. The second pilot study demonstrated that there is no full correlation between language proficiency and conceptual fluency. The dominance of L1 in the conceptual content of words was very strong even in bilinguals with advanced language proficiency. Knowledge may be blended and present in synergic concepts; however, it does not mean it is used in a native-like way. This is where synergic concepts are tied with conceptual socialization. Synergic concepts make it possible for speakers to sound native-like if they wish to, because they have developed the conceptual knowledge native-like language use requires. The question is whether they really want to sound native-like. This is, however, another issue that I do not wish to discuss here. 7. C O N C L U S I O N

This chapter argued that in the mind of bi- and multilingual speakers there are synergic concepts that are the results of conceptual blending. Synergic concepts are notions that are lexicalized in both languages but have a different socio-cultural load in each language. In the CUCB of proficient bilinguals the two different socio-cultural loads are blended. This may result in a conceptual domain that is not equal to the content of the conceptual domain in either language. The development of synergic concepts is the result of conceptual blending which is the driving force of the development of any concepts. Conceptual blending is not a bi- or multilingual phenomenon. It occurs in the mind of monolingual speakers as well. However, there is significant

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difference between monolingual and bilingual synergic concepts from the perspective of what is actually blended. It was argued that words encode prior experience. All information relevant to their use is blended in the concept that is mapped on its label (word). What makes bilingual and monolingual conceptual development different is the nature and content of information that is blended. In the case of monolinguals concepts grow in the socio-cultural environment the given language community has created for itself. Additional knowledge and information derives from this socio-cultural environment, which usually results in a kind of fusion of “old” and “new” incoming knowledge. This is, however, not the case with bilingual concepts that are attached to a particular label(s) in L1 and a particular close “equivalent” in L2, and represent two different socio-cultural backgrounds and environments to different extents. When we use a second language, prior experience with an L2 word contains the limited prior experience with the given label as in L2, and the prior experience with the lexical equivalent of the given L2 label in L1. Because knowledge and information come from two different socio-cultural backgrounds that often contradict rather than match each other (different CSCPs) we can hardly speak about full fusion here. Blending rarely results in fusion in bilingual concepts because the constituents usually keep independence to some extent, which depends on the exposure to the two languages and cultures. Languages influence each other reciprocally. When we have a synergic concept in the CUCB, no matter whether we use the L1 label(s) or L2 label(s) that can denote that concept, we always have access to conceptual information that differs to a particular extent both from the L1 concept and the L2 concept (see “school” vs. “escuela” example above.) Paradis (in this volume) wrote about this phenomenon as follows: “With prolonged language contact, concept boundaries may change so that L1 words no longer activate their original conceptual meanings, but incorporate some or all conceptual features of their L2 equivalents. Semantic constraints on the use of L1 words become blurred. Faux-amis from L2 will creep into L1; For example, an English speaker living in a French environment will call a lecture a conference …” I argued that concepts encode contexts. Their boundaries are fuzzy because blended information attached to them is in a constant state of

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flux. The bilingual mind is exposed to more “pressure” in this respect than the monolingual mind. Further research is needed to clarify the processes that are responsible for the development and use of synergic concepts. NOTES 1. I am using Cruse’s (1992) term here. 2. I am much obliged to my students Saihua Xia, Jing Lei, Xiaojing Lee, Julia Coryell, and Susan Nesbitt-Perez taking my doctoral seminar in the spring of 2005. They helped me a lot with data collection. REFERENCES Barsalou, L. W. 1993. Challenging assumption about concepts [commentary].Cognitive Development, 8: 169–180. Bibok, K., and Eniko˝, N. T. 2001. How the lexicon and context interact in the meaning construction of utterances. In Eniko˝, N. T., and Károly, B. (eds.), Pragmatics and the flexibility of word meaning. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 289–321. Bierwisch, M. 1996. How much space gets into language? In Bloom, P., Mary, A. P., Lynn N., and Merrill F. G. (eds.), Language and space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 31–77. Bierwisch, M. 1997. Lexical information from a minimalist point of view. In Chris W., Hans-Martin G., and Manfred B. (eds.), The role of economy principles in linguistic theory. (Studia Grammatica 40.) Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 227–266. Birman, D., and Trickett, E. J. 2001. The process of acculturation in first generation Immigrants: A study of Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents and parents. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(4): 456–477. Blommaert, J. 1998. Different approaches to intercultural communication: A critical survey.Plenary lecture, Lernen und Arbeiten in einer international vernetzten und multikulturellen Gesellschaft, Expertentagung Universität Bremen, Institut für Projektmanagement und Witschaftsinformatik (IPMI), 27–28, February 1998. Brooks, L. 1978. Nonanalytic concept formation and memory for instances. In Rosch, E., and Lloyd, B. B. (eds.), Cognition and categorization: 65–79. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cruse, D. A. 1990. Prototype theory and lexical semantics. In Savas, L. T. (ed.), Meaning and proptotypes: studies in linguistic categorization. London: Routledge. 382–402. Cruse, D. A. 1992. Antonymy revisited: some thoughts on the relationship between words and concepts. In Adrienne, L., and Eva, F. K. (eds.), Frames, fields, and contrasts: new essays in semantic and lexical organisation. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum. 289–306.

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Fauconnier, G. 1997. Mappings in thought and language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fauconnier, G., and Mark, T. 1998. Conceptual integration networks. Cognitive Science, 22(2): 133–187. Fauconnier, G., and Mark, T. 2002. Conceptual blending and the mind’s hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books. Gagne, R. M. 1977. The conditions of learning and theory of instruction. New York: Holt, R. and Winston. Gee, J. P. 1999. An introduction to discourse analysis. London: Routledge. Giora, R. 1997. Understanding figurative and literal language: the graded salience hypothesis. Cognitive Linguistics, 7: 183–206. Giora, R. 2003. On our mind: salience, context and figurative language. Oxford: OUP. Gumperz, J. 1982. Discourse strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, J., and Jenny, C. 2005. Bilingual communicative space. Intercultural Pragmatics, 2(1): 1–26. Herweg, M. 1992. “Aspectual requirements of temporal connectives: evidence for a two-level approach to semantics.” James, P., and Sabine, B. (eds.), Lexical Semantics and Knowledge Representation: proceedings of the 1st SIGLEX Workshop, Berkeley, California, USA, June 17, 1991. Berlin: Springer. 185–200. Jackendoff, R. 1983. Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Jackendoff, R. 2002. Foundations of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kecskes, I. 2000. A Cognitive-pragmatic approach to situation-bound utterances. Journal of Pragmatics, 32(6): 605–625. Kecskes, I., and Tunde, P. 2000. Foreign language and mother tongue. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kecskes, I. 2001. The “graded salience hypothesis” in second language acquisition. In Niemeier, S., and Puetz, M. (eds.), Applied cognitive linguistics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter: 249–271. Kecskes, I. 2003. Situation-bound utterances in L1 and L2. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kecskes, I., and Tunde, P. 2003. “How to demonstrate the conceptual effect of the L2 on L1?” In Cook, V. (ed.), The effect of L2 on L1. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters: 247–267. Kecskes, I. 2004. Lexical merging, conceptual blending and cultural crossing. Intercultural Pragmatics, 1(1): 1–21. Kecskes, I., and Isabel, M. C. 2005: Lexical choice as a reflection of conceptual fluency. International Journal of Bilingualism, 9(1): 49–69. Kecskes, I. 2006. On my mind: thoughts about salience, context, and figurative language from a second language perspective. Second Language Research, 22(2): 219–237. Lamberts, K., and David, S. 1997. Knowledge, concepts and categories, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Malt, B. C. 1994. Water is Not H20. Cognitive psychology, 27: 41–70. Mitchell, R., and Florence, M. 1998. Second language learning theories. London, New York: Arnold. Ochs, E. 1988. Culture and language development: language acquisition and language socialization in a Samoan village. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ochs, E., and Bambi, S. 1984. Language acquisition and socialization: three developmental stories and their implications. In Shweder, R., and LeVine, R. (eds.), Culture theory: essays on mind, self and emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 276–320. Paradis, M. 1998. The other side of language. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 11: 1–10. Persky, I., and Birman, D. 2005. “Ethnic” identity in acculturation research: a study of multiple identities of Jewish refugees from the Former Soviet Union. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36(5): 1–16. Platt, E., and Troudi, S. 1997. Mary and her teachers: a Grebo-speaking child’ place in the mainstream classroom. Modern Language Journal, 181: 28–49. Pustejovsky, J. 1995. The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smith, E.E., and Sloman, S.A. 1994. Similarity- vs. rule-based categorization. Memory and Cognition 22, 377–386. Smith, L. B., and Larissa K. S. 1997. Perceiving and remembering: category stability, variability and development. In Koen, L., and David, S. (eds.), Knowledge, concepts, and categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 161–196. Sperber, D., and Deirdre W. 1995. Reprint. Relevance. Oxford: Blackwell. Original edition, Oxford: Blackwell, (1986). Violi, P. 2000. Prototypicality, typicality and context. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), Meaning and cognition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 103–123. Vygotsky, L. S. 1962. Thought and language. Boston: MIT Press. Wierzbicka, A. 1996. Semantics: primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Willett, J. 1995. Becoming first graders in an L2: an ethnographic study of L2 socialization. TESOL Quarterly, 29(3): 473–503. Wittgenstein, L. 1953. Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

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CHAPTER 3

M AT R I X : S C H E M AT I C U N I V E R S A L S . H O W M A N Y M I N D S D O E S A B I L I N G U A L H AV E ? Liliana Albertazzi University of Trento, Italy

Abstract None of the current reflection on language universals analyzes the categorial question from the point of view of the ontological levels of reality. The levels of the cognitive processing of information and its linguistic expression are sometimes discussed, but not the ontological levels of reality, probably because of the “linguistic” version of ontology as a simple theory of descriptions which predominated in the last century. This chapter underlines the structural difference among different kinds of categories, avoiding the errors that may derive from imprecise delimitation of their roles. As to ontological categories, the analysis emphasizes the difference between general ontological categories and regional ontological ones. Finally, the chapter shows that “recognizing” an item does not mean, by default, applying a taxonomic category or a base category. On that basis, a proposal is made of experiments verifying the existence of presentative pathologies, that is, pathologies occurring at the very base format of representations.

1. P O E T RY R E S E M B L E S PA I N T I N G S ?

The relationship between ontology, categorization, and linguistic expression is still an open question. It requires the analysis of too many variables relative to the dynamic nature of information, where a certain role, as a Kantian “regulatory idea,” is also performed by the epistemological paradigm that predominates at a particular time. The issue becomes even more complex when considered in light of bilingualism or multilingualism, given that in this case account must be taken of an additional variable. In fact, while it is already difficult to analyze the connection between reference and conceptualization in the case of a monolingual, it is even more so in that of a bi- or multilingual, where the analyst must consider a variety of forms of conceptualization 63 I. Kecskes and L. Albertazzi (eds.), Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism, 63–97. © 2007 Springer.

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sometimes in conflict with each other, and which may affect both the reference and the conceptualization. Moreover, this greater complexity cannot be explained by simply adding additional categories. The conflict may come about at several levels, for instance when growing up monolingual and then learning a second or third language; learning implicitly and explicitly; being brought up bilingual; acquiring different types of language, for example, a spoken language and a sign language (on the development of Creole sign languages see Pinker 1994; Golden-Meadow et al. 1995; Emmorey 2004). The conflict may also concern different components of bilingualism, like proficiency, fluency, forms of low and elite bilingualism, individual pragmatic abilities, and emotional motivations. Finally, the conflict may arise not only on aspects of conceptualization relative to specific grammatical bases (Pavlenko 1999) but even within an alternative general paradigm, such as the ones underlying the Western languages or the Asiatic languages (On this type of bilingualism see Wei 1994; Noguchi & Fotos 2000; Shin & Milroy 2000; Mishina-Mori 2005), with the further variant of bilinguals who live, for example, in highly industrialized Western contexts, or vice versa. Analysis of bi- and multilingualism has a crucial problem to solve: determining how conceptual representations are organized on the basis of two or more conceptual systems with differing degrees of relational complexity (Clark 2005). Put more concisely: is the mind of a bilingual or multilingual different from the mind of a monolingual (On this topic see De Groot et al. 1997. See also Hakuta 1986. On the effect of L2 on L1 see specifically Kecskes & Papp 2000 and Kecskes in this volume). 2. C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N I N A S I A N A N D W E S T E R N C U LT U R E S A N D L A N G U A G E S

Recent studies in social psychology have sought to identify the conceptual paradigms that underlie two different cultures: that of Asia and that of the West. It seems that, while Westerners categorize according to the classical Aristotelian procedure of membership in classes and difference by genus and species, Asians rely on the concept of resonance

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between social forms and self-understandings on the one hand and the philosophical assumptions and scientific approaches on the other (Munro 1985; Nisbett 2003: 27–28). The Tao Te Ching is expressly contrary to the implausibility and defectiveness of the taxonomic categorization which obstinately distinguishes and restricts the meanings of terms and attributes. The only valid ontological categorization for the Asian mentality, in fact, seems to be that between part and whole which is intrinsically bound up with the concept of relation. Then, while Westerners distinguish and categorize mainly in terms of objects, properties and shapes, Asians categorize mainly in terms of stuff or continuity of matter – in other words, in terms of a generalized holism which often retains ancient animistic elements profoundly rooted in the Asian vision of the world (Nisbett 2003: 148). The essential difference between the two cultures would therefore reside in the categorization of the surrounding environment into objects by Westerners, and into relations by Asians, and respectively into sets of properties and qualitatively salient aspects. The difference is immediately apparent in Western and Asian languages (which may privilege the use of nouns or verbs, or which mark generic nouns by syntax or by contextual and pragmatic cues, etc.), in the manner in which they are learned, and in the categorial attitudes that derive from them. Experiments in developmental psychology with American and Chinese children show the existence of a diverse preference in categorization. For example, on the basis of the presentation of triplets like a cow, a chicken, and a bunch of grass, Chiu found that theAmerican children preferred to group objects because they belonged to the taxonomic category (cow, chicken), whereas Chinese children preferred to groups objects on the basis of their thematic relationship (the cow eats the grass) (Chiu 1972; see also Norezayan et al. 2002; Nisbett 2003: 140–148). Western children, for example, learn the meaning of a category expressed in substantival form as a set of objects which share certain properties denoted by the corresponding noun. This induces them to pay particular attention to individual features in order to form further categories based on sets of similar properties. The same applies to the creation of abstract objects from properties through the use of suffixes (“goodness,” “happiness,” etc.). Asian children belatedly learn to categorize objects

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because they are primarily oriented to categorizing relationships among objects which have concrete properties and interact with circumstances connected with the environment. In Asian languages, moreover, because words have multiple meanings in more instances than words in Western languages, the context is even more crucial for the understanding of sentences. The two types of categorization have considerable consequences in logic, in linguistics (context, role and limits of the various types of definitional or prototypical categorization, role of the principle of the excluded third), in the experimental sciences (how to conceive an experiment and how to interpret the data), and in multi-analysis (how to construct a conceptual space which comprises the many potential points of view on certain items of entities). In principle, one might hypothesize that there may be consequences not only for contents but also for the processes underlying the conceptualization of someone who speaks more than one language, especially if the languages are of very different geographical and cultural provenance, and which may configure entirely different “minds.” Verification of this hypothesis, which obviously has a close bearing on one of the central concerns of cognitive science, can be undertaken by inquiry of various kinds: from science of the brain, to experimental analysis of mental contents in the laboratory, to epistemological investigation. There remains the structural aspect of a language consisting in the pragmatics of communication, which applies to both monolinguals and multilinguals. As Marty observed, referring to the “internal constructive form” of a language: No language explicitly expresses everything that we want to communicate; each of them resembles a stenograph or a sketch. There is always a certain difference, often a considerable one, between on the one hand what the speaker thinks and feels and the listener must equally think and feel, and on the other, what is expressed (Marty 1976: 145). Here I shall not deal with the functionalist aspects and the communicative function of language (Bühler 1934; Vygotsky 1962). Rather, I shall focus on forms of reference and designation (bezeichnen).

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From a philosophical point of view, the question of categorization highlighted by the above-mentioned research on the differences between Western and Asiatic languages can be framed as follows: 1. Of the two prevalent modes (taxonomic and relational), only one (the taxonomic mode) has ontological value, because it concerns “objective” features of reality, while the other one does not. This conception has dominated Western epistemology for several centuries. 2. The two modes are simply points of view, local conceptualizations without ontological value derived from the specific development of a culture over time. In this sense, they are conceptual categories, lacking only historical-cultural reconstruction of the context of origin. Comparison with other forms of categorization in other languages therefore relates to social and/or anthropological comparative analysis, and their choice and/or use for pragmatic and functional purposes. 3. Both modes are valid categorial options: they comprise a universal (ontological) principle, and they hold at different levels of complexity. In this case, their ontological “typicality” must be explained: if the modes refer to different levels of reality, so that de jure one does not exclude the other; in what terms does their ontological relevance obtain de facto? 3. I S S U E S F O R D I S C U S S I O N

Between these extremes are the two conceptions dominant in linguistic analysis: innatism and relativism (Dirven, Verspoor 1998: Chapter 6). Regarding the innatist conception, the more natural forms of innatism turn into Platonism, and rationalist and idealist variants of it (Prinz 2005: 688–689), but they may equally well merge with syntactic generativism if they are referred to base capacities and structures (Chomsky 1981). From this latter point of view, innatism – which first arose from physiological studies after sparking renewed interest in the early stages of cognitivism – is today of particular interest to the brain sciences (see Jackendoff 2003: Chapter 4). The relativist theory instead emphasizes

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that the structural diversity of languages is due to their different cultures of provenance. Whorf writes: We are thus induced to a new principle of relativity, which told that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated (Whorf 1956: 214). Accepting this principle has important consequences, because: It will be found that it is not possible to define “event, thing, object, relationship” and so on, from nature, but that to define them always involves a circuitous return to the grammatical categories of the definer’s language (Whorf 1956: 215, Emphasis added). In other words, ontological categories do not exist. On careful consideration, however, the matter is not so simple, for various reasons. First, one must ask whether the relativist theory does not allow for ontological reference even if it is not directly connected with physiology (consider the third of the above categorization options). Second, the diversity of linguistic forms may concern external forms like suffixes or prefixes: as evident, for example, when there is a parallelism between the form of the expression and the thought expressed (Mensch, des Menschen) or when the same content is expressed in different ways (hominis/de Menschen). However, the diversity of linguistic forms also stems from inner parameters of differentiation between reference and conceptualization. This involves the so-called inner linguistic form (Marty 1976), which holds in two ways: (i) in situations where there is no parallelism between form of thought and the concept expressed, as in the case of impersonal expressions, and aspect which concerns the word form: and (ii) in the choice of different methods of designation, ranging from onomatopoeia to metaphor. The inner linguistic form is figural, because it uses images, mostly of perceptive origin, as collateral representations (“wavering of judgment,” “shaken persons,” “neither here nor there” or “keel” for ship) and thus characterizes a prevalent mode of designation by a particular language

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(Marty 1916–1920 II: 1–67). In those occurrences, the names arouse the same concept, choosing different means to lead toward it. Briefly, the images or the imaginative content can change, but the meaning (i.e., the way in which the object is intended) does not. The internal linguistic form of a linguistic sign is then a psychic component of the sign itself (see Apresjan 1974; Violi 1997: 8.5.2). When these modes of referring are lexicalized, they make designation possible without the original relationship having constantly to be reiterated: this is the case of lexicalized metaphors, which do not exist in all languages and may not have a shared meaning, therefore cannot be “translated.” The problem of the inner linguistic form is consequently of particular importance when two or more reference systems interact – that is, in bi- and multilinguals – because meaning may be activated at all these levels of inner and outer form of the two or more languages. The innatist and relativist theories have been put forward in several variants and with differing degrees of radicalness. The problem is that linguistic analysis sometimes combines innatist claims (the existence of universal parameters) with relativist assumptions. In numerous authors, universal structures of taxonomic categorization (variously understood as necessary and sufficient conditions in componential semantics, lists of distinctive classes, syntactic and/or formal structures) coexist with prototypical universals that have little to do with them. This may be evidence for the third ontological option in categorization, namely the ontological value of different types of categorization and different ontological levels of reality. The same situation is apparent in Lakoff’s work, where imageschemata (like “container”) are tied to perceptive invariants which are prevalently visual/sensomotorial, and therefore universal, but ample recognition is given to the anthropocentrism and cultural relativism of the types of conceptualization, as in the case of the radial categorization of the Dyrbal (Lakoff 1997: 6). However, as shown in categorization of terms by multilingual speakers, the semantic categories conveyed by word meanings do not all map in the same way onto the conceptual categories in specific domains (containers, e.g.) (Clark 2005: 460–461). Moreover, radial categories are actually a description of the semantic

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organization of polysemic lexemes (i.e., linguistic categories), and not categories in the prototypical sense (i.e., conceptual categories) (Kleiber 1990: 174; see Violi 1997: 6.12). From a philosophical point of view, in addition to the innatism/ relativism option, the mind/language/reality relationship comprises a further aspect, namely the direct or mediated relationship between language and reference: that is, whether language refers directly to states of affairs in the world (Wittgenstein’s hypothesis in the Tractatus) or whether it must pass through the medium of conceptualization. If conceptualization is viewed as the non-eliminable medium for reference, the question arises as to whether the cognitive processes can be modified by the semantic contents of a language’s lexicon. This point, too, is of obvious importance in the case of bi- and multilinguals. Here, I shall not seek to furnish a definitive solution for the problem of the relation between reference, categorization, conceptualization and linguistic expression. Rather, as a philosopher, I shall stress certain categorial elements connected with the problem of language universals. These are elements which I consider important for interpretation of empirical linguistic data, and which may therefore also assist analysis of more complex conceptual configurations, like those of bi- and multilingualism. On the basis of a categorial restructuring of the question, in the conclusions I shall also put forward a working hypothesis. My analysis, as opposed to a formalistic one, will be based on a cognitive approach to natural language (Albertazzi 2000a) similar to the theses of cognitive linguistics, but with some distinctions connected to the categorial structure of the framework. I agree with the contention of cognitive linguistics that the only strong argument in favor of universals consists in identifying the structures of the world which are transposed into natural language. However, in that area of inquiry, despite declarations in favor of phenomenology, these invariants (e.g., image schemata) are directly traced back to the material world and/or to the brain. My hypothesis that the transposition occurs at a different level of organization of information and that only indirectly can it be traced back to the other levels mentioned, in this case, the existence of universals, springs from a different conception of ontology.

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4. A N A LT E R N AT I V E A P P R O A C H TO C AT E G O R I Z AT I O N

4.1. Categories I am aware that the linguist is specifically interested in the dynamics of lexical areas in which categories are placed within a system, and the way in which they oppose and boundary themselves according the constraints imminent to the system itself. A scholar in bi- and multilingualism is consequently interested in eventual superposition and interference between the different configurations of semantic areas. Strictly speaking, the problem of ontological categorization is a philosophical problem. However, the two questions interrelate and my aim is to disentangle some of the interrelated problems. The current discussion on language universals fails to analyze the categorial question from the point of view of the ontological levels of reality. The levels of the cognitive processing of information and its linguistic expression (Levinson 2003) are sometimes discussed, but not the ontological levels of reality, probably because of the “linguistic” version of ontology as a simple theory of descriptions which predominated in the last century (Quine 1969; Putnam 1975; Bickerton 1981, 1984). In my analysis I shall stress the structural difference between categories, avoiding the errors that may derive from imprecise delimitation of their roles. Moreover, I shall emphasize the difference between general ontological categories and regional ontological ones. Finally, I shall show that “recognizing” an item does not mean, by default, applying a taxonomic category or a base category. In the classical Aristotelian classification, the categories are universal classes of being which can be affirmed or predicated of any object. They entail a pre-established organization like that by proximate genus and specific difference (Categories 5: 2a). In the Aristotelian table of categories, therefore, “category” has a twofold meaning: (i) that of the genera of predication, the column of predicates expressing the same meaning; and (ii) that of the summum genus, the predicate that defines the common feature of each column. In the category “zebra,” for example, the substance expresses what the thing is, the quality of how it is, the time and space when and where it is, etc. The determination of a subject is predicated by an inherence relationship. The categories therefore

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(i) are predicamenta, (ii) have “grammatical genesis,” and (iii) possess “ontological value”. As we have seen, the Aristotelian category has ontological value, but it has subordinate features as well. The “logical” aspect of categories, for example, resides in the fact that they are the highest predicates; and the “linguistic” aspect resides in their grammatical genesis, that is, in the fact that the predicates are extrapolated from propositions and then analyzed in themselves or in their primary dimension. In short, starting from Aristotle’s position, categories can be interpreted in three ways: (1) categories with lexical terms (semantic interpretation) (Trendelenburg 1833); (2) categories as concepts, supreme predicates (logical interpretation) (Apel 1963); (3) categories as real determinations (ontological interpretation) (Bonitz 1853). One may argue that the categories merely furnish the predicative framework within which to locate certain predicates, a sort of location for the species of the predication. In other words, the categories are points of view with which to classify the concepts that distinguish between the objects of thought, corresponding to which are various kinds of statement (Zeller 1859: 68). In modern terms, a conception like this would allow graded or partial category membership. One may argue that analysis of the grammatical differences between the categories shows that they are concepts, not forms of statements or manners of predicating concepts. However, they are not concepts in the sense of mere mental representations but instead in their relation to the judgment, insofar as they are the predicate. They express logical relationships (Trendelenburg 1833). For example, the category of substance has its grammatical genesis in the substantive, those of quantity and quality in the adjective, that of relation in comparison, those of where and when in the adverbs of place and time, those of doing and undergoing in the active and passive forms of verbs, that of posture in the perfect tense (for intransitive verbs). However, not all parts of the discourse (e.g., the article) have a correspondent category. Then, on the basis of the same language diverse ontologies can be framed (think of Plato and

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Aristotle). The reference of grammar to ontology, consequently, has to be taken with caution. Finally, one may consider the categories as real concepts, but deny that they are merely predicates, or that the table of categories is designed with merely logical and grammatical relations in mind. Categories, then, are not definable either in relation to mental representations or on the basis of logical-grammatical relationships as mere predicates (Bonitz 1853; Brentano 1975). This point of view affirms that the categories are therefore the summa genera denoted by the term being (on), and they provide us with orientation in the sphere of experiential data by expressing simple concepts. In other words, the categories have ontological value. However, the three above-mentioned variations are partially compatible. Even when the third point of view, the ontological one, is adopted, the other valences intrinsic in the concept of “category” imply that considering the categories as points of view in the division of the species, and/or taking them to be only locations for certain predicates, may be a prevalently figural mode of expression. Additionally, in the neo-Aristotelian framework given to the categories by Brentano, their ontological and therefore universal value is primary (Brentano 1975). The argument that the categories are general concepts with which a mind and/or a language group represents its thoughts and judgments – the concept of category with relativist value dominant in cognitive science – therefore admits various levels of interpretation which should not be lumped under a single heading. In other words, the fact that the categories can also stand as a particular community’s points of view does not exclude their ontological value. The problem is distinguishing between universal categories which hold for all the domains (like space, time, substance, accident, part, whole) and categories which relate to specific domains (e.g., law, economics, representation, etc.). Another problem is that of determining what is meant by the universal character (and its extent) of the categories, doing so independently and alongside their relativist, local nature as points of view relative to specific conceptualizations of languages. Asecond point relevant to categorial analysis is the difference between general ontological categories and regional ontological categories (to

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use Husserl’s terminology): that is, those categories which concern particular domains of reality like the mind, language, society (Hartmann 1935; Husserl 1970, 1982; Poli 2002). In other words, the ambit of linguistic reference comprises a general invariant categoriality which concerns the existent as such, and a specific categoriality relative to the realm of reference comprising the cognitive and social processes that give rise to language. From this latter point of view the categories are necessarily mixed, because they relate to categories of perceptive type (e.g., sensory schemata functionally transposed into a language’s cognitive grammar), of psychological type (figural contents, auxiliary representations, and linguistically expressed mental contents), and of social type (specific elaboration of the conceptualization and grammar of languages reflecting cultural factors in the broad sense, which may greatly differ). Consequently, there is no single meaning of “category” but different senses of the term referring to its diverse valences. When pronouncing in favor of an innatist or relativist account of language, therefore, it is important to make use of the proper and nonsynonymous senses of the term “category.” This is of special importance for analysis of conceptualization in bi- and multilinguals, and it may have consequences on the cultural organization of a society which comprises linguistic minorities. As mentioned, one may also have to pronounce simultaneously in favor of the universal and relativist value of the categories, but without lapsing into contradiction. I will now clarify this point. 4.2. Reference As Greenberg observed in his well-known papers on universals: The problem of universals in the study of human language as in that of human culture in general concerns the possibility of generalizations which have their scope all languages or all cultures. The question is whether underlying the diversities which are observable with relative ease there exist valid general principles. Such invariants would serve to specify, in a precise manner, the notion of “human nature” whether in language or in other aspects of human behaviour. They would, in

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effect, on the lowest level correspond to the “empirical generalization” of the natural sciences. On higher levels they might be dignified by the name of laws. The search for universals, therefore, coincides on this view with the search for laws of human behaviour, in the present context more specifically those of linguistic behaviour. (Greenberg 2005: 9) The theories that have been advanced on the existence of universals and specifically on the “mind/language/reality” relationship have varied from a minimum/maximum of nominalism to a minimum/maximum of realism. But the distinctive aspect of the question is that apparently similar conclusions have been reached from very different ontological premises. I will briefly review some crucial components of the question. Boetius, in his commentary on Porphirius (Boethius 1906), formulated the realist and conceptualist positions on “the question of universals”: 1. Universals exist as, for example, the substantial form or common nature of the things (realism). In this case, ontological universals and semantic universals coincide: general names signify species or genera. 2. Universals are abstractions, constructions of the mind (conceptualism). Conceptualism is per se a semantic theory, not an ontological theory of universals. Specifically, conceptualism maintains that the mental representation of a category consists of properties which are common and unique to the items in the category; each property is therefore individually necessary for category membership. A third position between the above two is nominalism. This maintains that: 1. There exist only individuals and individual events (i.e., species, sets, general properties, etc. are not mind-independent). 2. Representations signify individuals (they refer to singular things) determined by the place, space and part of matter that they occupy. 3. Universals are singular things, and they are such only by signification (they are signs of several things).

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4. Universals are not mental images, but signs. 5. Universals have an intentional structure; they are acts of intuitive (i.e., non-conceptual) reference to an object (Formigari 2002: 4.5). Briefly, universals are not realities as such, but ways of signifying. What is sensorially given becomes intelligible through a process of construction due to the intentional reference. Generality, then, is not a mode of being but a semantic feature (see Panaccio 2005). In nominalism, therefore, conceptualizations are ontologically founded on a specific entity, the individual existent bearing the representation. In other words, it is only in the structure of the act of intuitive reference – of which the individual is the existential bearer – that one should seek an ontological foundation for the invariants of categorization. All the rest depends on the context and on the generality of the representation. The problem is how the foundation of reference should be defined. Because reference is structurally connected to individual existence, it might be argued that it must be eminently “subjective” and situated, in that it is tied to the contingency of the existent. A solution to the problem has been offered by Brentano, who argues that: 1. The sole ontological foundation is given by the “who” that selfrepresents an object of some kind but is also a psychophysical system rather than a more complex individual (an Ego). 2. Although general, a representation follows structural modes of information organization which are primarily temporal and structural, and secondarily contentual. They are neither substantial forms nor concepts. 3. Consequently, generality is a feature of representation (not an ontological characteristic); however, representation’s structure is universal. However, here an important change has been made to classical nominalism. The structure of the space/time of the intentional reference no longer coincides with physical space/time: rather, it is the space/time of consciousness, which emerges at the primary and secondary levels of conceptualization and differs from the structures of the physical world

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because it is figural in character. This notion has been well expressed by Wertheimer when discussing the nature of perception: I stand at the window and see a house, trees, sky. Theoretically I might say there were 327 brightnesses and nuances of colour. Do I have 327? No. I have sky, house, and trees. It is impossible to achieve “327” as such. And yet even though such droll calculation were possible – and implied, say, for the house 120, the trees 90, the sky 117 – I should at least have this arrangement and division of the whole, and not, say, 127 and 100; or 150 and 177. (Wertheimer 1938: 71) The qualities of visual, acoustic, tactile, olfactory, and intermodal representation of the phenomenal field are always somewhat sloppy, in fact. As a consequence, they are not immediately codifiable in terms of angular degrees or wavelengths of color. Nor are they immediately codifiable in terms of mathematical invariants, that is, primitives which do not change in transformations; nor in terms of the non-accidental properties of the computational theory of vision. These measures can only be used to define the stimulus. Instead, apprehended in representation, are general qualities; these being the simple, essential structural characteristics of the items observed pertaining to a perceptive space with specific features. Additionally, these qualities have the marked tertiary and emotional valence of affordances. For example, rather than the “sun” as such, what we apprehend is “brightness,” “warmth,” “yellowness,” etc. (see Metzger 1941; Cornelius 1990; Albertazzi 1995). The characteristics of the space/time of representation can be summarized as follows: 1. It is eminently “topological” (consider the deformations that occur in so-called perceptual illusions) (Lipps 1879; Koffka 1935; Brentano 1988; Albertazzi 2006a), continuous and durational (James 1950). 2. It is qualitative: in fact perceptive phenomena have their own laws of figural organization (Wertheimer 1938). 3. It has non-metric representational units in that it is made up of neither points nor instants but a homogeneous coalescence of the spaces of the various items, where all perceived things and processes are

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located (see also James 1950 II: Chapter 4; Pöppel & Logothetis 1986; Pöppel 1994; Albertazzi 2002a). Specifically, in what laboratory research calls the “time of presentness,” that is, the time of the actual presentation, physical data are altered qualitatively, which means that the objects triggered by the stimuli undergo structural reorganization. The complexity of this reorganization is well exemplified, for example, by phenomena of temporal and spatial dislocation (Benussi 1913; Vicario 1970; Albertazzi 1999), which show that the phenomenal level is not reducible to the physical level, and that in perception qualitative factors of grouping prevail over quantitative ones. However, this conception does not fit easily with the merely psychophysical account of perception still dominant in cognitive science. The latter is a theory of measurement devices in its turn connected to the empiricist/common sense view of the mind. According to this account, which uses abstractions derived from the technology-shaped refinement of common sense taxonomies (e.g., color terms), the perceptual system has to inform us about elementary physical quantities such as energy of sounds, intensity and wavelength of light (see Berlin et al. 1969; Viswanath 2005; Regier et al. 2005). In this framework, therefore, perception cannot but be simply parasitical on the stimulus. Adopting one or the other conception, however, also has important consequences for the relationship between reference, conceptualization and language. Analyzing linguistic reference and conceptualization within a psychophysical framework, in fact, requires that these phenomena be considered only in relation to the underlying stimuli and/or neuronal processing, so that it is almost impossible to account for the specific qualitative nature of conceptualization and a cognitive space. In contrast, if reference is mediated by a structure which presents categorial novelties with respect to the physical world, it naturally acquires form through a (qualitative) content and finds expression in language and other forms of communication (Brentano 1977). In other words, the space/time of intentional reference is the matrix of conceptualization. Even more importantly, as the base structure it is the same for all phenomena, and is therefore universal. This, in short, is the conception at the origin of Marty and Bühler’s theory of language.

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Embedded in language, therefore, is a structural variety of semiotic ontological components (reference to the object – given “intentionally,” that is, mediated by the formal structures of consciousness) (Albertazzi 2005: Chapters 3, 4), conceptual components (reference to the content), and expressive components (reference to the lexical components). Hence, conceptual meaning and lexical meaning are clearly distinct, so that the frequent confusion between semantics and conceptualization is avoided. Indeed, as demonstrated by recent experimental studies, some forms of aphasia may affect the semantic representation of the lexicon of a particular language without involving or damaging its conceptual counterparts (De Groot 2002; Paradis, this volume). Additionally, it is highly likely that there exist conceptual components which do not have lexical counterparts, for various reasons including the following: 1. the reference to the object is given in plurivocal modes, direct or indirect, and via the contents that the inner form of a language selects for designation; 2. the existence of form of behavior definable as “wordless psychic exchange” (Bühler 1934) which takes place in everyday contexts; 3. the pervasive tenor of a particular language (Bühler distinguishes languages into impressionistic [Eskimo], categorial [Bantu], and universal [European languages]). However complex the grammar of intentional reference, what is saved in the nominalist conception of natural language is the invariance of the structure through which reference takes place – and therefore a form, albeit a highly peculiar one, of realism. Indeed, one may speak of “immanent realism” (Albertazzi 2005). Contrary to classical realism, in this conception universals do not exist independently of the subject, yet they are nevertheless invariant structures given by the way in which information is organized at the psychic level. Universality is therefore guaranteed by the structure of intentional reference, which is experimentally analyzable and largely coincides with Fechner’s inner psychophysics (Albertazzi 2005: Chapter 4). It has been the task of Gestalt psychology – which derives from Brentanism – to furnish experimental explanations of the nature of the intentional structure and the origin of cognitive processes; first at the primary (perceptive) level, then

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at the secondary level (inferences, hypotheses, deductions, memories, problem solving, etc.). It should be stressed that the analysis of linguistic conceptualization from the point of view of a formal theory is not in contradiction with the analysis of the phenomenon from the point of view of the underlying levels of information organization. In other words, analysis of the space/time structures of conceptualization does not deny the importance of determining their counterparts at the level of stimuli or neurons. Simply, it does not reduce meaning to these structures that pertain to the physical worlds; moreover, it does not consider the categories as such to be modes of perception (see Neisser 1978: Chapter 4). 4.3. Patterns The introduction of the psyche (I deliberately use the Aristotelian term instead of “mind” because it is situated, that is, comprises a broader array of phenomena) into the relation between linguistic expression and ontological reference is nothing new. Consider twentieth-century linguistics, from the physiologically based theories of Wundt (1904) and Steinthal (1968) to the already-mentioned descriptive ones of Marty or Bühler. The notion has assumed considerable importance in the development of cognitive science after decades of dominance by rationalism embedded in the first generations of AI and the logical-formal approach to natural language. The thesis of the conceptual character of semantics, in particular the presence of conceptual universals embedded in the semantics of natural language has been sustained in cognitive science on very different philosophical premises which have very different meanings from the categorial point of view. This thesis is put forward by representationalists like Fodor, mentalists like Johnson-Laird and Wierzbicka, and experientialists like Lakoff, Langacker and Talmy. All of these have argued for the uniqueness of the human mind reflected in the conceptual (Langacker 1990) processing of languages; but also taking into account the relativity and/or anthropomorphism of specific conceptual categories and forms of construal developed by language communities. Evidently, the thesis of the universality of some cognitive components and the thesis of linguistic

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relativism are linked, but different authors have interpreted the relationship between them in very different ways. The proponents of a lingua mentalis, for example, cannot hold the same assumptions as the proponents of experientialist theories. The assumptions of Wierzbicka, who connects mental operations with grammatical structures, are very close to those of a universal grammar and therefore presuppose the existence of language universals common to all languages, suggesting the idea of a lingua mentalis. Conversely, those of Lakoff relate to an experientialist conception of the mind as embodied or rooted in sensomotorial experience. In other words, this is more an Aristotelian psyche than a Leibnizian or computational mind. The concept of “primitive” – even if it shares the criticism of the concept of “naturalistic taxa” as the ordering of items into a system of concepts – differs profoundly among authors: for Wierzbicka (1996), for example, these are primitives similar to those of componential semantics. This point is crucial because, for example, cognitive semantics is often criticized for adhering to a correspondence theory of meaning (semantics as conceptual semantics). The criticism is directed at Wierzbicka as well as Langacker and Lakoff, despite the considerable differences between their positions; and above all despite the importance given to prototypical categorization (Rosch 1978) by each of them (Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1990; Wierzbicka 1996) – where concepts are functions of environmentally-based but subjectively characterized experience (Lakoff & Johnson 1999). As I have pointed out, however, if the foundation of the categorization of schemata and image-schemata lies at the neuronal level, then the criticism of psychophysical correspondence brought against cognitive linguistics is entirely justified: conceptualization becomes a reflection of the physical world’s properties according to the dictates of classical psychophysical theory (see e.g., Zeki 1993; Pulvermüller 1999; Martin 2001). There is consequently a conflict inherent in cognitive linguistics which must be resolved at categorial level. Another point concerns the fact that analysis by cognitive semantics has centered on spatial categorization (Miller & Johnson-Laird 1976; Lyons 1977). Within the debate on the eminently spatial nature of linguistic conceptualization, not only are the points of departure different,

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but also the referents. For example, the referent for representationalist theory is early research in artificial intelligence (the mind as a computer), that for mentalist theory is a cultural Platonism (the idea of semantic primitives), that for experientialist theory is Gestalt psychology and, more generally, phenomenology (the experiential and bodily basis of human categories) (Svorou 1994; Ungerer & Schmid 1996; Heine 1997). An approximate grouping of theories conceals the differences between diverse approaches only apparently coming together in the same “relativist theory” of spatial conceptualization. Finally, one may agree that primitives can be identified in linguistic categorization (Jackendoff 1983; Wierzbicka 1996; Lamb 1999) without immediately attributing them either semantic or conceptual significance – that is, without considering them to be a set of conceptual features representing the properties of a category. Vice versa, by referring to the Kantian notion of empirical concept, one considers them semiotic primitives connected with perception. It is important to underline, however, that the idea of empirical concepts in Kantian terms is not the same as in British empiricism: the first are cognitive routes, the second are more like mental images or inner models. Also, Kantian empirical concepts are not immediately tied to action, so that the dichotomy between “representing for thinking” and “representing for doing” does not apply to them (see Prinz 2005). Generally, when dealing with problems regarding conceptualization, the questions to ask about space are still those raised by James: How do we apprehend space? How is the system of real space and spatial relations constructed, starting from infancy? (See also Clark 2004: 461.) How do we perceive the third dimension? What role does cognition play in the perception of space? (James 1950 II: Chapter XX). Put in these terms, the question of primitives can be addressed by adopting Eco’s distinction among Cognitive Type (CT), Nuclear Content (NC) and Molar Content (MC). A CT is a sort of procedural rule for organizing multimedia perceptive experience. It comprises characteristic notes or typical features and serves to identify occurrences of primary-level entities (Eco 1997: Chapter 3, 3.3.1ff; Albertazzi 2004a). In the first instance it can be compared to the base categories of cognitive psychology (Rosch 1978) but only if its character as a procedural rather

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than contentual procedural rule is preserved. In other words, an “apple” or “banana” is not treated as a picture endowing a semantic content but as a “type” (an item with a certain shape, size, texture, etc., which is therefore edible). Primitives should be taken not as conceptual features but as dynamic patterns anticipatory of a “type” (a similar position is held in Desclés 1993). The meaning of schematic pattern, then, should not be referred to the use of schema as in Hintzman (1986), which holds an opposite point of view, that is, that objects are categorized along a fixed set of features (see Treisman & Gelade 1980). A CT apprehended in a schema is subjective in nature: for example, that of “Rattus,” which instantiates the species Rodent, but for me may be instantiated as “mouse” and for others as “rat.” Concepts are not instantiated in the same way by everyone, as the Fregean theory would maintain. Both these individual CTs, however, obey common structural rules for the codification of perceptive forms, such as the “grouping” of the parts of the whole according to similarity, or “good form” for the unification of the item’s formal coherence. Therefore, at the basis of the individual instantiation of a CT, there is always recognition of a pattern which is as regular and symmetrical as possible. This pattern, however, is schematic in nature: it is not an image/picture in the sense commonly given to the term by cognitive semantics (Jackendoff 1992), nor in its dictionary meaning à la Wierzbicka (1996: 340). It is the processing of salient (i.e., qualitative, like a vivid color) features from the point of view of the constitution of form. The procedural nature of information processing is therefore the same for individuals speaking the same language but with different CT access, and for bi- and multilingual individuals. Vice versa, the semantic primitive “Rattus,” on which we agree in language, is the expressed nuclear content (NC) (Eco 1997: Ch. 3, 3.3.2), the outcome of negotiation, in regard to which descriptive statements can be collected in different languages (Wierzbicka 1996). It does not necessarily coincide with my specific CT of “Rattus” (which may be both a “rat” and a “laboratory mouse.” The meaning of NC is a way out of Fodor’s idea that concepts are public, because in a nominalistic framework even concepts have to undergo a sort of negotiation once lexicalized.

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There are then the changes of meaning that occur in the translation of the same negotiated contents from one language to another (Eco 2003: Chapter 4). The NC differs from the CT because it derives from the negotiation of various individual CTs in a particular language community, so that the public (i.e., semantic) meaning of the entity is collectively standardized (Eco 1997: 3.3.2.). The NC, which broadly corresponds to the lexical meaning of a term, may obviously be more multi-faceted in speakers of more than one language, because of their differing inner linguistic forms, with the consequent constraints and feedbacks that the facets of one language may exert on those of a different language. In the case of bi- and multilinguals, it is of particular importance to analyze the NC because it indicates the set of specific facets that have been negotiated and incorporated into the lexicon of a particular language. This may concern both specific content/s and the mode/s of reference, given that there may be different ways to encode and access knowledge. It is in this, according to additive theories, that one of the advantages of bilingualism or multilingualism consists, which give greater capacity to distinguish between word and concept, and therefore greater flexibility in the cognitive abilities underlying the formats of conceptual networks. Finally, the point of view of a particular language community is expressed by another sort of information: MC (Eco 1997: Chapter 3, 3.3.3), which comprises highly diverse information items. Distinguishing among CT, NC and MC may be useful for the analysis of how different languages relate to their underlying concepts (Weinreich 1953). Additionally, from this point of view lexical items rarely have the same meaning as their translation equivalents (Paradis 1997). In short, the conceptual contents negotiated in the semantics of the lexicon may be qualitatively diverse, especially in the case of bi- and multilinguals, but not so the procedural rules for pattern recognition, which are universal. From a categorial point of view, paying attention to the subjective character of the CTs seems to support the hypotheses of classical Ockhamist nominalism. But in fact it does not. Eco himself stresses the presence of what Plato in the Phaedo called “nervatures” of being and which no form of epistemological conventionalism can afford to ignore.

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That which is universal, to use Arnheim’s expression, is the structural skeleton of items – a skeleton also composed of a balance among not immediately visible forces (like those toward the left and toward the right which regulate the so-called “duck/rabbit” illusion; Arnheim 1954: Chapter 2). The ineliminable difference between individual CTs – which concerns geographical setting, imprinting, cultural evolution, religion, social status, attitudes, etc. (and as such naturally plays a crucial role in first language acquisition) – does not in itself rule out the existence of a “universal schema” of, for example, “Rattus.” In other words, “Rattus” has an approximate extension which is not shared precisely by all. 4.4. Schemata A schema is structured on certain perceptive characteristics of the entity in question. For example, it comprises secondary and tertiary figural qualities and expressive movement . On this basis the schema of Rattus is universal, even if it is intrinsically dynamic (constructed on the basis of Abschattungen; Husserl 1982: Section 3, iii), and even if, because of its structural instantiation in a CT, it is subjectively connoted in relation to the individual who is its bearer in a particular setting and a particular community. However, the schema is not to be understood in the descriptive sense as offering defining conceptual or lexical properties. Indeed, it maintains its invariance until a certain topological deformation takes place in the type itself. The extendedness (not “metric extension,” which relates to the computational idea of schema as image/picture, silhouette or contour) of the Rattus schema, for example, is not conceptually deformable beyond certain limits, after which it assumes features pertaining to a “different type” of item. Defense of the existence of universals in the form of schematic universals should not be regarded as a weak defense, because it maintains an ontological foundation (the structure of intentional reference at primary level) which forms its matrix. Subjective integrations, including ratiomorphic categorizations such as anticipatory scheme, relation, and abstraction, are structural components of the schema at the level of the primary organization of information in the spatio-temporal qualitative

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structure of the time of presentness which underlies pattern recognition and as such is universal (Benussi 1923; Michotte et al.1962; Fraisse 1963; Musatti 1964; Kanizsa 1991. Also see Albertazzi 2003). There are then different degrees of the modes of cognitive integration (e.g., from seeing to thinking), inferences, judgments, etc., as well as anthropological and social (relativist) cognitive integrations which dynamically regulate their translation into NCs and MCs of more extended knowledge, and into lexical items. Considering the question from a holistic point of view, it is obvious that if language acquisition (especially of the first language) is not considered to be a genetically transmitted capacity (under a reductionist assumption), it is certainly connected to geographical, environmental and broadly cultural imprinting. This is to say, however, that it is not possible to draw structural boundaries between the original schemata and the language that expresses them conceptually and grammatically. When one considers a second or third language, the processes connected with the CT and the NC become more complex, because they involve dynamic transforming processes of conceptual and grammatical translation – as demonstrated, for example, by studies on gender. Yet, as mentioned, the procedural rules for pattern recognition remain invariant. In my view, the presence of language universals – one of the base assumptions of cognitive semantics – should be downshifted from an already amply-structured conceptual plane to a primary, intrinsically dynamic, semiotic plane. Acting at this level are concrete universals of perception (schemata or typical anticipations) (see Violi 1997: 6.13.2). The relativist component instead consists in the innumerable operations involved in the construction of meanings in diverse cultures which are then incorporated into speech as grammatical or lexical structures. Also, the assumption of universal ontological schemata should be explained. The questions to be answered are the following. What are the universal rules for constituting schemata? On what bases do they operate: psychophysical for stimuli, physiological for neural elaboration? And what is the basis for the qualitative appearance of an entity? At present, the analysis of schemata has been conducted with particular

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reference to sensomotorial schemata, and in relation to neuronal processing (Lakoff et al. in press). Grounding the meaning structure of a schema to a low level – for example that of the Rattus schema to a low level of vision or neuronal motor perception – creates an almost unbridgeable gap between this type of bottom-up component (generally understood in cognitive science as being data-driven) and top-down ones (generally understood as inferential components, past experience, etc.). This is exactly the case of theories which, by positioning the nature of language universals at the syntactic level in the neurons, are forced to attribute “meaning” to intrinsically relativist components. The latter are distinct from the syntax of the generative mechanism (structurally top-down) based on mnestic traces and relative inferences. Therefore, conceptual meaning can be nothing other than “inferential” and “culture-driven” interpretation (Bunge 1980). If the contribution of conceptualization to the relationship between natural language and reality is considered undeniable, then the relationship must be explained on categorial bases, so that a dividing line can be drawn between the possible presence of language universals and the generally-accepted idea that language and thought closely parallel one another and linguistic diversity is reflected in cognitive diversity (Levinson 2003). 5. A WAY O U T A N D C O N C L U S I O N

To conclude, in accordance with the general paradigm of cognitive linguistics, and in support of the idea that there are primary schemata in conceptualization, the thesis argued in this chapter has been that the connections between the forms of categorization which regulate the meaning of perceptive situations and the linguistic renderings of those same perceptions are governed by the formal invariants of the perceptive process; specifically, it has been claimed that the invariants of the perceptive domain are conceptualized in accordance with the principles of gestaltic organization. For example, it has been shown that there is a strong correlation between Talmy’s Force Dynamics schema and the perceptual structures ruling the meaning of prototypical verbs of movement, confirming that causatives are related to that particular cognitive

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scheme (see Albertazzi 2002c). The thesis is similar to the principle of invariance proposed by Lakoff (1990) but differs from it in certain basic respects. Specifically: 1. It considers the initial domain of reference to be the structures of phenomenal perception (rather than the physical and/or neurophysiological domain). 2. It emphasizes the importance of the dynamic nature of the actual presentation. Analysis of this type yields surprising results (Albertazzi 2002c), and implies the existence of a natural semiosis of meaning, at least regarding the primary level of the cognitive processes (see also Violi 1997; Eco 1997). In light of these considerations, I suggest that conceptualization in languages should be analyzed from a new perspective, as follows. 1. First, render conceptualization independent from direct reference to neuronal activity or the psychophysics of stimuli, connecting it instead, in foundational manner, to the figural, experiential, and phenomenal level of intentional reference. Comparison should first be made between phenomenal structures, and only subsequently of the underlying physical structures evidencing their neurophysiological correlates and the relationship with stimuli. Meaning, in fact, is qualitative in nature. 2. Second, consider conceptualization in light of the diverse, subjectively integrated, formats of representation. My proposal is therefore that analysis should downshift from alreadystructured forms of semantic conceptualization to the matrix which gives origin to such conceptualization. The hypothesis, in fact, is that universals are rooted in the space/time of the actual presentation: that is, in the unfolding processes, anticipatory, retentive and qualitative, of the so-called time of presentness. This proposal has something in common with Mandler’s idea of image-schemata (Mandler 1992), but intends to analyze the microgranularity of the structure from the point of view of its phenomenal genesis.

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On this hypothesis, conceptualization has universal character at the presentative level as recognition of perceptive items in a schema (what has been called, by Arnheim, the “structural skeleton”). More precisely, in the actual reference a particular item is generalized as an item of a certain type, while at the same time the schema is particularized (Eco 1997: 153). Conceptualization is instead relativist at the level of conceptual representation, and it involves a series of further cognitive integrations, largely top-down, which merge into the linguistically expressed content, and into a broader, encyclopedic molar knowledge of items. This is the most relativistic component of meaning, given that its contents are strictly cultural and heterogeneous. As such, it is a highly functional variable in the case of bi- and multilingualism because it may activate networks of unpredictable meanings. Only experimental analysis can verify whether features invariant at the level of the actual presentative structure are evident at the linguistic level as well, in a sort of primary figural field of language (Bühler 1934; Albertazzi 1995). Some work in that direction concerning synesthesia, for example, is developing. The fundamental problem is that the presentative structure – the base format – is eminently temporal; an unfolding in an extendedness, however brief, and only on conclusion of this unfolding is it possible to talk of a spatialized objectual content (Benussi 1922–1923). Looking for universals at this level means looking for eminently temporal and dynamic universals – or in other words, unfolding schematic universals. It is no coincidence that, in organized languages, temporal terms derive from spatial terms and not vice versa. This is because at the lexical level information has already been organized contentually (i.e., spatially), thus losing the intrinsic dynamism of the pattern (see Traugott 1978; Clark & Clark 1979). If it is not possible to bring out the unfolding of structure at the temporal level, we must abandon the endeavor to prove the existence of language universals unless we refer – as in formal semantics – to a computational mind which zero-sets the qualitative dimensions to quantitative metrics. In contrast, if we are able to demonstrate a connection between, for example, linguistic deficits and deficits in the matrix of the

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generative, qualitative structure of semantics, the existence of language universals may be proven. Pathologies like anomie or aphasia are usually analyzed in relation to mental content (On bilinguals see Sasanuma & Park 1995; Green 1998; Roberts & Le Dorze 1998); or in relation to neuronal processing (see Nilipour & Ashyeri 1989; Paradis & Goldblum 1989; Obler et al. 2000; Green & Price 2001; Missina-Mori 2005). It would also be interesting to verify the existence of presentative pathologies: for example, in situations where the temporal structure of the presentation – which usually varies elastically according to the contents apprehended (Michotte 1963) – is in some way set by rigid parameters: that is, it cannot expand or contract owing to some sort of pathological fixedness of the speed of the proto-attentive mechanisms. For this purpose, experiments could determine whether there is an excess or shortfall in the time taken to switch from analytical to global vision; or in the time taken to switch from two-dimensional to three-dimensional vision; or in the times of apparent movement phenomena (like stereokinetic movements) that involve the relationship between space/time microstructures, unfolding of the phases and recognition, identification and the naming of objects perceived in succession (Albertazzi 2004). As the fundamental situation for the identification and prediction of the objects in our surrounding environment, movement is in fact one of the main sources of the genesis of meaning. Finally, experiments could focus on the structure of individual CTs in mono-, bi- and multilinguals, especially regarding the formation of metaphors and analogies. The discovery of schematic universals at the level of primary semiosis which regulate the way in which conceptual information is structured at the primary level, before the construction of semantic contents, may be a sound basis for discussion of language universals. Speakers of different languages or different types of languages always share, at the foundational level, a qualitative universal matrix, despite the presence of even very different forms of conceptualization driven by the semantics of those languages. The possibility of understanding and translating meaning (on translation see Eco 2003) from one language to another depends on this pre-linguistic matrix endowed with expressive qualities (Violi 1997), which is not yet fully conceptual but is constitutively

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completed by the structure’s subjective integrations. The originality of the mode of conceptualization is also connected with the conceptual CTs of the speakers of a particular language. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I thank Irving Biederman, Istvan Kecskes, Lia Formigari, Roberto Poli and Patrizia Violi for their fruitful comments on the text, and Ton Dijkstra for having suggested some specialized literature while writing it. REFERENCES Albertazzi, L. 1995. Il campo figurale della lingua. Esprimere, indicare, rappresentare. In Negrini, G. (ed.), Categorie, oggetti e strutture della conoscenza. Rome: CNR. 9–43. Albertazzi, L. 1999. The time of presentness. A chapter in positivistic and descriptive psychology. In Cattaruzza, S. (ed.), Vittorio Benussi, special issue of Axiomathes 10: 49–74. Albertazzi, L. 2000a. Which semantics. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), Meaning and cognition. A multidisciplinary approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company. 1–24. Albertazzi, L. 2000b. Directions and perspective points in spatial perception. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), Meaning and cognition. A multidisciplinary approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company. 123–143. Albertazzi, L. 2002a. Continua. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), Unfolding perceptual continua. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company. 1–28. Albertazzi, L. 2002b. Towards a neoaristotelian theory of continua: Elements of an empirical geometry. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), Unfolding perceptual continua. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company. 29–79. Albertazzi, L. 2002c. Kinetic structure and causatives. Axiomathes, 1: 17–37. Albertazzi, L. 2003. From Kanizsa back to Benussi: Varieties of intentional reference. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), The Legacy of Gaetano Kanizsa, special issue of Axiomathes 13: 239–259. Albertazzi, L. 2004a. Deformazioni secondo regole. La grammatica del vedere. Paradigmi, 2004: 35–57. Albertazzi, L. 2004b. Stereokinetic shapes and their shadows. Perception, 33: 1437–1452. Albertazzi, L. 2005. Immanent realism. Berlin-New York: Springer. Albertazzi, L. 2006a. Visual spaces. In Albertazzi, L. (ed.), Visual thought. The depictive space of the Mind. Amsterdam: Benjamins Publishing Company.

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CHAPTER 4

G R A M M AT I C A L G E N D E R I N T H E B I L I N G U A L LEXICON: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC APPROACH Angeliki Salamoura University of Cambridge, UK

Abstract This chapter is organized as follows. The first section is a general introduction to grammatical gender from various perspectives. Section 2 reviews studies which compare L2 with L1 gender processing; Section 3 discusses the role of the L1 gender information during L2 gender processing; and Section 4 focuses on the (language-shared or language-specific) nature of gender representation in the bilingual lexicon. After a brief overview of the present study which investigates further the nature of gender representations in the bilingual lexicon (Section 5), Sections 6, 7 and 8 present in detail two experiments on gender representation and discuss the experimental findings. Finally, Section 9 draws together the present and previous evidence on the representation of gender in the bilingual lexicon and gender processing in L2.

1. I N T R O D U C T I O N

Grammatical gender is one of the most complex and intriguing linguistic categories. Hockett (1958: 231) defines genders as “classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words.” This definition alludes to the two main aspects of the correct use of grammatical gender: gender assignment, namely, the allocation of gender to nouns, and gender agreement, the reflection of a noun’s (or agreement controller’s) gender in the form of other lexical items. For the purposes of this chapter, the term gender will refer to grammatical gender only, which should be distinguished from natural/ biological gender, that is, nouns that take their gender according to the sex of their referent. While both grammatical and natural/biological gender might involve the same agreement processes, there is an important 99 I. Kecskes and L. Albertazzi (eds.), Cognitive Aspects of Bilingualism, 99–151. © 2007 Springer.

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difference between them regarding gender assignment. The value of natural gender is determined by the conceptual message of the utterance, and more specifically, by the sex of a noun’s referent. The value of grammatical gender, on the other hand, is an inherent property of a noun (Levelt et al. 1999) and is stored and retrieved from the mental lexicon. Speakers of gender languages must retrieve gender information from the mental lexicon and compute gender agreement fairly frequently during the course of speech. Van Berkum (1997), for example, estimates that in Dutch, a language with a moderate degree of gender agreement, a speaker has to access gender information at least once every 10 sec. Although the demanding processes of gender assignment and agreement are fairly automatic and effortless for the native speakers of a language, this is not exactly the case for second language (L2) learners. Arguably, the correct use of grammatical gender is perhaps one of the harder linguistic phenomena to be mastered by L2 learners (e.g., Rogers 1987; Dewaele & Véronique 2001). Rogers (1987), for instance, presented evidence showing that grammatical gender in L2 German is a persistent problem even for advanced learners. What are the possible sources of L2 learners’ difficulties with gender? Do the difficulties stem from the possibility that gender processing by L2 learners – as a number of other areas in L2 – is different from gender processing by native speakers? For example, ERP research on L2 sentence comprehension has shown that native speakers and L2 learners process the semantic aspects of sentences alike but processing differences between the two groups emerge when it comes to the syntactic component of sentences (e.g., Weber-Fox & Neville 1996; Hahne 2001). Is L2 gender processing similar to, or different from, L1 gender processing? Or do L1 gender values interfere when processing gender in L2? It is now well-established that when bilinguals read, listen to or name words in their L2, depending on the task, information from translationequivalent, semantically related, or orthographically and phonologically related words in their L1 also become active (e.g., Dijkstra et al. 1998; Hermans et al. 1998; van Heuven et al. 1998; Colomé 2001; Jared &

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Kroll 2001; Jared & Szucs 2002). If this nonselective activation is not restricted to semantic and word-form information only, but also extends to gender information, then the processing of a word in one language that requires access to its gender should be affected by the gender of its translation-equivalent in the other language. Finally, one natural question that follows from the above concerns regards the nature of the mental representation of gender: Is there a common integrated gender system or are there two distinct gender systems in the bilingual mental lexicon? Most findings on the organization of the bilingual lexicon converge on the view that the conceptual/semantic level is language-shared whereas the word-form level is languagespecific (e.g., Gerard & Scarborough 1989). This is the prevalent approach that the majority of bilingual studies and models have adopted, albeit with some variations, since the mid-eighties (e.g., Paradis 1985; Perecman 1989; Kroll & Stewart 1994; Kroll & de Groot 1997). Up to now, however, all discussion about the organization of the bilingual lexicon has revolved, with few exceptions, around the particulars of the representation of a word at the conceptual/semantic and form levels, leaving relatively untouched the issue of the representation of lexical-syntactic information, such as grammatical gender, which makes up a word’s “grammatical meaning.” Is gender information commonly represented for L1 and L2 as a word’s semantic information, or is it represented separately? In spite of the significance of gender for speech well-formedness and the apparent difficulties it poses for L2 learning and processing, only fairly recently has psycholinguistic research begun to explore the workings of gender processing in L2 and the nature of gender representations in the bilingual lexicon1 . The aim of this paper is to review recent research on the above issues and to present new empirical evidence that clarifies the nature of the mental representation of grammatical gender in bilinguals/advanced L2 learners. I assume a broad definition of bilingualism. Bilinguals are defined as all individuals who regularly use two languages at any level of proficiency. Therefore, the terms bilinguals and second language (L2) learners will be used interchangeably in this paper, following established practice in the bilingual literature.

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2. H O W D I F F E R E N T I S L 2 G E N D E R PROCESSING FROM L1 GENDER PROCESSING?

2.1. Behavioral Evidence A number of behavioral studies that have investigated on-line gender processing in L2 have focused on comparing L2 learners’ and native speakers’ performance in a variety of linguistic contexts and tasks. Apart from the finding that L2 learners’ performance falls short of that of the native speakers, a number of other issues have been raised. Holmes and Dejean de la Bâtie (1999) contrasted L2 learners and native speakers of French with respect to their gender assignment skills and their degree of reliance on gender-form regularities. They used a gender monitoring2 and a grammaticality judgment task3 in the visual modality with nouns whose ending was regular or exceptional for their gender, and invented nouns consisting of a nonword stem and a realword ending. They found that both groups were faster and more accurate in their responses to real nouns with regular rather than exceptional endings. However, where L2 learners were faster and equally accurate when responding to nonwords than nouns with regular endings, the native speakers were slower and much less accurate with nonwords than regular ending nouns. These findings indicate that L2 learners rely more heavily on gender-form regularities and less on the lexical entry of the noun itself to retrieve gender information. Taraban and Kempe (1999) conducted a self-paced reading task with L2 learners and native speakers of Russian to evaluate gender assignment across phrases (in this case, between the subject NP and the VP). The critical stimuli were sentences whose subject NP comprised either gender-unambiguous or ambiguous nouns that were preceded either by a gender-marked adjective or no adjective at all; the final reading window in each sentence contained two different (gender-inflected) versions of the main verb and participants had to choose the one that matched the gender of the subject NP. Although both the L2 learners’ and the native speakers’ reading and choice latencies on the main verb benefited from the presence of a gender-marked adjective in the subject NP, only the L2 learners’ performance was slower and less accurate in the presence of a gender-ambiguous subject noun. Again, this pattern of results indicates

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the higher reliance of L2 learners, in comparison to native speakers, on unambiguous, gender-marked forms to facilitate processing. Bordag et al. (2006) showed that gender retrieval involves different processes in L1 and L2. In a picture naming and grammaticality judgment task, they found no differences in the processing of nouns with a gender-typical, ambiguous and atypical ending in L1 German (Adj + N) NPs. In contrast, the processing of gender-atypical NPs by English learners of German was slower and more error prone than the processing of gender-ambiguous NPs which in turn was slower than the processing of gender-typical NPs4 . Finally, Guillelmon and Grosjean (2001), using a word repetition task in which the auditory target noun followed a gender-congruent, incongruent or neutral determiner + adjective sequence, found that both the monolingual French speakers and early English-French bilinguals demonstrated strong facilitatory and inhibitory effects. In contrast, late English-French bilinguals were insensitive to either gender-congruent or incongruent information in the preceding auditory context during word recognition and repetition. (see Scherag et al. (2004) for similar results in L2 German with an auditory lexical decision task [LDT]). Without ignoring the differences in terms of materials, languages and tasks among the previously discussed studies, their findings suggest that, unlike native speakers, late L2 learners5 process gender features – and more specifically, gender-form regularities – only when they have to explicitly compute gender agreement (e.g., Holmes & Dejean de la Bâtie 1999; Taraban & Kempe 1999), but not when speech processing requires no gender information, such as repetition of single words (e.g., Guillelmon & Grosjean 2001; Scherag et al. 2004). This means that a syntactic (gender) congruency check among the words of a phrase, which occurs at the post-lexical stage of word recognition, may not be obligatory for late L2 learners in contexts where no such checking is absolutely necessary. In contrast, it appears to be obligatory for native speakers. Nonetheless, when learners do process gender in L2, gendermarking on the noun ending itself appears to be a very reliable cue (Bordag et al. 2006). Finally, age of acquisition appears to be an important factor since only early bilinguals exhibit native-like performance (Guillelmon & Grosjean 2001).

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2.2. Electrophysiological Evidence Only a few studies to date have employed an ERP methodology to examine processing of grammatical gender in L2. Using a grammaticality judgment task, Sabourin (2003; see also Sabourin 2001) investigated the on-line processing of grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in Dutch by German, Romance language, and English speaking learners. The ungrammaticality of sentences consisted in violations of gender agreement within definite or indefinite NPs, or between an antecedent definite or indefinite NP and a relative pronoun. Sabourin mainly based her conclusions on the ERP data from the German group only, because only the German group’s accuracy scores were significant in the on-line grammaticality judgment tasks. The German group showed a P600 effect in all gender-mismatching conditions, just like the native Dutch speakers. However, the P600 pattern exhibited by Germans was different from that of the native speakers in terms of timing and distribution. For example, the German P600 effect had a very early onset and was present over more frontal electrodes (for gender violations in definite and indefinite NPs), or had a more restricted distribution and was more delayed (for gender violations between an antecedent NP and a relative pronoun). Thus, Sabourin argued that the ability to reach native-like performance while processing grammatical gender in L2 is limited. Only the learner group whose L1 gender system was very similar to that of the L2 approached a native-like pattern of gender processing (German group), but this pattern was quantitatively different from that of the native speakers. Given that only the German group performed significantly in the on-line judgment of gender agreement and only the German group showed similar processing to that of the native speakers, Sabourin also concluded that transfer plays a decisive role in the on-line processing of grammatical gender in L2. More specifically, the mere existence of the category “grammatical gender” in the L1 was not enough to lead to native-like processing of this feature in L2 (as was the case for the Romance group). Instead this ability was found to be dependent on the presence of the same or very similar surface gender features between L1 and L2 (as is the case between Dutch and German).

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3. T H E R O L E O F T H E L 1 G E N D E R S Y S T E M IN THE PROCESSING OF L2 GENDER

The role of the L1 gender system has been investigated during gender processing in L2 production, listening and visual word recognition, and during gender assignment in L2. The main question was whether the gender information of one language influences the processing or assignment of gender in the other language. In all studies reported in this section, apart from Paris and Weber (2005), the critical manipulation concerned the relation between the gender of the target responses and their translation in the other language. One segment of the target stimuli shared gender with their translation equivalent nouns, while the rest had a different gender from their translation. Costa et al. (2003) tested four groups of highly proficient bilinguals. In three experiments, Croatian-Italian bilinguals named pictures by means of gender-marked definite determiner + noun or definite determiner + adjective + noun in their L2 (Italian). Naming latencies were not affected by whether the Croatian translation of the Italian target responses had the same or different gender. The same result held under conditions of speeded naming or mixed language naming (target pictures were named in L2 and filler pictures in L1). In two further similar tasks with target responses in the form of gender-marked definite determiner + noun, Spanish-Catalan bilinguals named pictures in their L1 (Spanish), and Catalan-Spanish, while Italian-French bilinguals named pictures in their L2 (Spanish and French respectively). The findings were the same as those of the first groups of bilinguals: the production of L2 gender-marked phrases was not influenced by the gender values of their L1 translations and, likewise, the production of L1 phrases was not influenced by the gender values of their L2 translations. Costa et al. (2003) claimed that, although their results do not distinguish between a language-shared or language-separate gender system in the bilingual lexicon, they suggest the autonomy of the L1 and L2 gender systems in highly proficient bilinguals, regardless of the symmetry between the two systems in terms of gender values and gender agreement targets. Croatian, for example, has three gender values (masculine, feminine, neuter) as opposed to Italian, which has only two (masculine,

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feminine); all other language pairs used in the study have an equal number and type of gender values (masculine, feminine). Additionally, in all Romance languages definite determiners are gender agreement targets in a determiner + noun NP, whereas Croatian has no determiners and thus the corresponding NP does not require computation of gender agreement. These findings, however, cannot be considered conclusive with respect to the role of the L1 gender system during L2 production for the following reasons. First, all participants in the Costa et al. (2003) study were highly proficient, almost balanced bilinguals. This proficiency is evidenced by their L2 error rates, which were not significantly different from those of the native speaker groups tested on the same material6 . This low error rate is surprising for L2 production that involves retrieval of grammatical gender since the difficulty of L2 learners, even advanced L2 learners, with gender assignment and gender agreement in L2 is well attested (Rogers 1984; Dewaele & Véronique 2001; Sabourin 2001, 2003). It may be the case therefore that the autonomy of gender systems observed in this study is restricted to highly proficient, balanced bilinguals, whereas the influence of the L1 gender values is more pronounced in less fluent, L1-dominant bilinguals. Second, the failure to observe any effect from L1 may also be due to the type of processes involved in determiner retrieval in the target languages used in the study (Italian, Spanish, and French). In the L1 literature a gender-congruency effect has been reported in Dutch and German with a picture-word interference task, that is, picture naming with a gender-marked (Det + N) NP was faster in the presence of a distractor word of the same gender (gender-congruent) than a distractor of a different gender (gender-incongruent) (Schriefers 1993; van Berkum 1997; La Heij et al. 1998; Schriefers & Teruel 2000). This effect was not obtained in Romance languages – Italian, Spanish, Catalan and French (Costa et al. 1999; Miozzo & Caramazza 1999; Alario & Caramazza 2002). A plausible explanation of this difference was provided by Miozzo and Caramazza (1999) in terms of early and late selection languages. In Dutch and German the gender value of the head noun is sufficient to fully determine the form of the appropriate definite determiner. Thus, determiner selection in these languages takes

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place early during NP production and can be subject to priming from the gender value activated by a distractor word. By contrast, in Italian, Spanish, Catalan and French, the gender value of the head noun does not suffice to choose the appropriate definite determiner from the existing set of allomorphs. Phonological information about the onset of the word following the determiner is also needed. Determiner selection in these languages, therefore, occurs at a later stage during NP production than in Dutch and German, namely, at the stage of phonological phrase assembly. Miozzo and Caramazza (1999) argued that a gendercongruency effect at the level of gender selection may also be present in a language like Italian but it is rendered invisible because any competition that may have arisen at the stage of gender selection (due to the activation of a different gender feature by the distractor) will have been resolved by the stage of determiner selection. Thus, determiner selection in these languages takes place too late to be influenced by priming from a distractor word. Although there were no distractor words in the Costa et al. (2003) study, there is a clear analogy between the two types of naming tasks. The role of “distractor words” in the simple naming tasks performed by bilinguals is assumed by the target noun’s translation in the non-response language. These distractors are “internally set” by the structure of the bilingual mental lexicon, following the widely accepted assumption that a concept (in the form of a picture in this case) simultaneously activates its lexical representations in both lexicons. In the same way, therefore, that a gender-congruency effect is rendered invisible in L1, any activation of the gender of the L1 translation will have dissipated by the time determiners are selected in L2 NP production; therefore, any influence of the L1 gender on naming latencies in L2 will not be possible to detect. Finally, the manifestation of an L1 gender effect might be further hindered by the specific characteristics of the gender assignment systems of the target languages. Italian, Spanish and, to a much lesser degree, French (Tucker et al. 1977; Holmes & Dejean de la Bâtie 1999) have relatively transparent formal (phonological/morphological) principles of gender assignment, that is, classification of nouns into gender classes. Languages with such transparent gender attribution systems

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might encourage superficial processing of L2 gender on the part of L2 learners: instead of retrieving a noun’s gender from the mental lexicon, L2 learners might compute the gender and the corresponding determiner by analogy to the noun’s ending, a much easier way to remember and recover the apparently arbitrary information (Carroll 1989; Holmes & Dejean de la Bâtie 1999). Since the majority of nouns used in the Costa et al. (2003) study abide by the above typical rules of gender assignment, the last possibility cannot be excluded and could explain the absence of an effect. Bordag (2003) had German low intermediate to low advanced learners of Czech name pictures in their L2 using either a single noun or a gender-marked adjective + noun. For both types of phrases, response latencies were slower and less accurate when the gender of the L2 noun did not match the gender of its L1 translation equivalent. Bordag interpreted this effect as evidence of interference of L1 grammatical gender during L2 NP production. This conclusion, however, is undermined by the fact that the gender interference effect was obtained not only during the production of gender-marked NPs but also during the production of NPs that do not require computation of gender agreement, that is, single nouns. Even more revealingly, the duration of the effect generated by both types of phrases was similar (single nouns: 74 ms, adjective + noun: 61 ms). There is strong evidence, however, from the L1 literature that the production of bare nouns does not induce any gender effect, suggesting that the processing of phrases that do not require computation of gender agreement cannot benefit or be inhibited by gender activation (La Heij et al. 1998). The presence of an almost equal duration effect in both types of responses implies that apart from L1 gender, other factors, such as the mixed presentation of single noun and adjective + noun trials, may have contributed to the different latencies between the L1–L2 gender-congruent and -incongruent nouns. Lemhöfer et al. (submitted) avoided the above dilemma by administering the naming of the baseline (single noun) and gender-marked (definite determiner + noun) conditions in blocks. They, too, found that German learners of Dutch were slower and less accurate when producing L2 gender-marked NPs comprising L1 gender-incongruent

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nouns than NPs comprising L1 gender-congruent nouns, relative to a gender-unmarked baseline. This effect was obtained with phrases containing both cognate and noncognate nouns. Lemhöfer et al. also used the same material in a visual LDT to examine activation of L1 gender information during L2 visual word recognition. They obtained the same pattern of results as in L2 picture naming but only with NPs containing cognates. L2 listening also seems to be affected by L1 gender information. In a series of as yet unpublished eye-tracking experiments, Paris and Weber (2005; see also Paris & Weber 2004) had proficient L2 learners listening to L2 auditory NPs consisting of a gender-marked definite determiner and a noun while looking at four object pictures. They found that learners did not use L2 gender information to reduce activation of gender-mismatching word competitors during spoken-word recognition in L2. Instead, they seemed to activate the gender of the L1 translation of the phonological competitors and use this L1 gender information to inappropriately restrict competitor activation during L2 listening. This tendency held for both cognate and noncognate competitors. Finally, the congruency of the L1 gender system with that of the L2 seems to affect gender assignment in L2 even off-line (Sabourin et al. 2006). In a paper-and-pencil gender assignment task, the accuracy scores for German learners of Dutch were significantly higher for Dutch nouns that had the same gender as their German translation than for nouns that had a different gender. This tendency was particularly pronounced for middle-frequency rather than high-frequency items. However, as this L1 gender influence was off-line, it may well reflect an (explicit) learning strategy rather than implicit processing. To summarize, research so far suggests that L1 gender information is active and affects processing of gender-marked phrases during L2 production, comprehension and listening; it also appears to be active and influence gender assignment in off-line tasks (Sabourin et al. 2006). Furthermore, this activation of L1 gender appears to be modulated by L2 proficiency level – it is not obtained with balanced bilinguals (Costa et al. 2003) – as well as by word type and mode of language processing – it is present only for cognate nouns in visual word recognition (Lemhöfer et al. submitted).

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4. T H E R E P R E S E N TAT I O N O F G R A M M AT I C A L GENDER IN THE BILINGUAL LEXICON

Recently, one study focused on the organization of the bilingual lexicon in relation to grammatical gender. Salamoura and Williams (in press) investigated whether gender representations are shared or independent in the lexicon of advanced L2 learners. In a translation task from Greek (L1) to German (L2), nouns with the same gender in both languages were translated faster than nouns with different genders when the L2 target utterance required computation of gender (adjective + noun). The study also looked at the role of word-form similarities by using noncognate and cognate nouns. The results of RTs did not differ for cognates and noncognates. Unlike noncognates, however, gender-incongruent cognates yielded more errors than gender-congruent cognates. These findings were interpreted as evidence for a shared L1–L2 gender system with cognates relying more heavily on the L1 gender value than noncognates. 5. T H E P R E S E N T S T U D Y

While the previous studies investigated the role of the L1 gender information during the processing of L2 gender in comprehension and production (for L1-dominant bilinguals) and asked whether L1 and L2 have one shared or two independent gender systems, they did so by looking only at cases of translation-equivalent L1 and L2 nouns. If, however, there is an integrated L1 and L2 gender system – at least for L1-dominant bilinguals – as previous studies seem to suggest, this system will not be restricted to translation-equivalent words but encompass all L1 and L2 nouns. The present study will test for cross-language gender effects between non translation-equivalent L1 and L2 nouns during comprehension and production, that is, the activation and access of gender representations during grammaticality judgment (Experiment 1) and picture naming tasks (Experiment 2). If L1 and L2 have an integrated gender system, accessing the gender of a noun in one language will subsequently affect accessing the gender of a different noun with the same gender value in the

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other language – even if the two nouns are not translation-equivalents or semantically related. It will also investigate whether the common L1–L2 gender representations are shared between comprehension and production by testing for an effect of visual primes on picture naming (Experiment 2). Two different hypotheses were put to the test. The language-shared gender hypothesis states that gender specifications, and therefore inherent syntactic properties of words, are shared both within and across languages among all L1 and L2 nouns and predicts a gender-congruency effect both within and between languages for L1 and L2 nouns that are neither translation-equivalent nor semantically related. That is, processing of a target NP will be faster after processing a prime NP of the same gender relative to a prime NP of a different gender. Across languages this effect will be due to the activation of the same gender representation (e.g., masculine) in the between language (BLg) gender-congruent (CON) condition (see Figure 1a), as opposed to the activation of two different gender representations (e.g., feminine and masculine) in the BLg gender-incongruent (INC) condition (see Figure 1b). In the BLg CON condition the target gender representation (e.g., masculine in Figure 1a) receives simultaneous activation from two lemmas (the L2 target lemma and the L1 gender-congruent prime), whereas in the BLg INC condition the target gender receives activation from only one lemma (the L2 target lemma in Figure 1b). The higher level of activation of the target gender representation in the CON compared to the INC condition will result in faster response latencies for the CON condition. The language-independent gender hypothesis claims that gender specifications are language-specific and predicts a gender-congruency effect only within but not between languages. No BLg gendercongruency effect is predicted as neither the gender-congruent nor the gender-incongruent L1 prime will activate the target gender representation (see Figures 2a & 2b). These two hypotheses were investigated for Greek (L1) advanced learners of German (L2) who are L1-dominant. Although the main focus of this study is the bilingual lexicon, both Experiment 1 and 2 also incorporate an L1-only part to test the within-language predictions of the two hypotheses.

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Gen

′

“century”

der

o

Finger “finger”

der

Greek (L1)

Lemma level

Masc

er

Gend

German (L2)

Figure 1a. Model of language-shared representations of gender information associated with nouns at the lemma level in the bilingual lexicon (based on Levelt et al. 1999): An example of gender-congruent L1 & L2 nouns.

′   “edition”

Gen

Fem

r

Gende



der

Finger “finger”

der

Greek (L1)

Lemma level

Masc

German (L2)

Figure 1b. Model of language-shared representations of gender information associated with nouns at the lemma level in the bilingual lexicon (based on Levelt et al. 1999): An example of gender-incongruent L1 & L2 nouns.

′

“century”

Masc

Greek (L1)

Masc

Gen

der

o

der

Finger “finger”

Lemma level

r

de Gen

German (L2)

Figure 2a. Model of language-independent representations of gender information associated with nouns at the lemma level in the bilingual lexicon (based on Levelt et al. 1999): An example of gender-congruent L1 & L2 nouns.

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′   “edition”

Fem

Greek (L1)

Masc

Gen

der



der

Finger “finger”

Lemma level

er

d Gen

113

German (L2)

Figure 2b. Model of language-independent representations of gender information associated with nouns at the lemma level in the bilingual lexicon (based on Levelt et al. 1999): An example of gender-incongruent L1 & L2 nouns.

6. P R O F I L E O F T H E B I L I N G U A L S I N T H I S S T U D Y

Twenty-six native Greek-speaking advanced learners of German took part in Experiment 1 and another 26 in Experiment 2, none of whom had participated in Experiment 1. Participants were either students or graduates of the department of German Studies of the University of Athens. All had an advanced level language certificate in German (e.g., Kleines Deutsches Sprachdiplom from the Goethe Institute or Abitur). [In the remainder of this section, numbers before the slash refer to Experiment 1 and numbers after the slash to Experiment 2.] On average they started learning German at the age of 10 (SD 5.1)/11 (SD 4.6) and had received 10 years (SD 3/SD 2.9) of formal instruction; they had lived in a German-speaking country an average of 3.5/1.15 years (SD = 3.98/SD = 4.24); 14/16 reported learning German through formal instruction and 12/10 through a combination of classroom instruction and exposure to a German-speaking environment. All but one spoke at least one other foreign language apart from German (M = 1.46/M = 1.5) but none were balanced bilingual in any of them. The participants scored a mean of 3.18(SD 0.42)/3.07 (SD 0.43) on a self-assessment 4-point scale designed to measure L2 communicative competence (Bachman & Palmer’s (1989) Method 2, Self-rating) and a mean of 7.56 (SD 1.47)/7.12(SD 1.36) when asked to rate their comprehension in L2 on a 10-point scale (1 = very low . . . 10 = same as in my native language).

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7. E X P E R I M E N T 1 : G R A M M AT I C A L I T Y J U D G M E N T S

Experiment 1 focuses on the representation of grammatical gender during language comprehension within and across languages. In particular, it investigates whether gender features are shared within a language (L1) and whether equivalent L1 and L2 gender features are also shared in the bilingual lexicon between (non translation-equivalent or semantically unrelated) L1 and L2 nouns during language comprehension. To that end, an on-line grammaticality judgment task with definite determiner + noun NPs was employed. Participants were presented with a continuous stream of NPs. Prime NPs were the trials immediately preceding target NPs and for both types of phrases participants had to perform a grammaticality judgment; that is, they had to decide whether each NP was grammatical or ungrammatical. The ungrammaticality in this case comprised a gender agreement violation between determiner and noun. Unlike the grammaticality judgment tasks used in previous studies (e.g., Bates et al. 1996; Akhutina et al. 2001), this task did not compare responses between grammatical and ungrammatical phrases; instead, it focused exclusively on the grammatical phrases and checked for a gender-congruency effect, that is, whether judgment on an NP accelerates following judgment on a gender-congruent relative to a gender-incongruent NP. Since previous research has shown that L2 learners process gender information only when the local syntactic environment necessitates it (Holmes & Dejean de la Bâtie 1999; Taraban & Kempe 1999; Guillelmon & Grosjean 2001), a task involving explicit computation of gender agreement, such as grammaticality judgments on gender-marked NPs, was considered the most appropriate means to test the representation of gender features in the bilingual lexicon. The L1–L2 pair was Greek-German. Findings that only learners whose L1 gender system resembled closely that of the L2 approached native-like gender processing in L2 (Sabourin 2001, 2003) render GreekGerman an optimal language pair for observing possible cross-linguistic gender effects. This is because both have a tri-partite gender system (masculine, feminine and neuter) and require gender agreement between determiner and noun (the type of NP to be tested in this and the following experiment).

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The task was divided into two blocks. In the within language block, primes and targets were in L1 (Greek). In the between languages block, primes were in L1 (Greek) and targets in L2 (German). In both Greek and German the definite determiner and the noun of an NP must agree in terms of grammatical gender, number and case. Number and case were kept constant throughout the task (singular nominative). More importantly, a key manipulation in the material was that none of the nouns in the German NPs had the same gender as its Greek translation (e.g., Wort (“word”) is neuter while its Greek translation λ´εξη is feminine). This procedure ensured that any effect obtained in the BLg block would not be due to priming of the gender of the Greek translation of the target NP. All L1 (Greek) primes and target NPs consisted of gender-opaque nouns. Greek, unlike German, morphologically marks grammatical gender on the noun ending. More specifically, nouns can be divided into two categories. The first are nouns that have identical inflectional suffixes across all three genders in the nominative singular (-oς is attached to masculine, feminine, and neuter word forms). I will term these genderopaque nouns since grammatical gender cannot be recovered from the word ending alone7 (see Bates et al. 1996 for a similar classification of nouns in Italian). The second are nouns that have different inflectional suffixes according to gender in the nominative singular. I will refer to these as gender-transparent nouns. This choice of gender-opaque NPs for Greek was made to deflect claims that gender judgment with gender-transparent NPs can be a very superficial process, a mere check between the definite determiner and the noun ending without any access and retrieval of the gender feature of the noun. For this reason, gender-opaque NPs, which require access to the mental lexicon to retrieve gender information, were thought to be more appropriate to use in a grammaticality judgment task in which processing of gender is fairly explicit. Had the L2 NPs been gendertransparent, it would have been possible for L2 learners to retreat to a conscious strategy on L2 gender decision (“infer the grammatical gender from the gender-transparent noun ending”). If equivalent gender representations are shared among L1 and L2 nouns of the same gender, a cross-language gender-congruency effect is expected. That is, activation of a gender representation via a NP in

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one language will not dissipate immediately and will speed subsequent processing of a NP in the other language that requires access to the same gender as opposed to a different gender. If gender representations are not shared between L1 and L2, then a gender-congruency effect is expected within L1. Finally, to investigate whether any priming effect obtained in this paradigm derives from the repetition of the definite determiner form between primes and targets, ungrammatical NPs were arranged into pairs of “primes” and “targets,” and were controlled for determiner congruency (whether the determiner was repeated or not between “primes” and “targets”) and gender transparency of the noun ending. If repetition of the definite determiner form is a determinant of priming in this task, then priming should be obtained both with grammatical and ungrammatical NPs. 7.1. Method The critical materials were grammatical NPs comprising a definite determiner and a noun. There was a within language (WLg) block which contained 16 gender-opaque Greek (L1) target NPs (6 masculine, 5 feminine and 5 neuter) and a between language (BLg) block which contained 16 German (L2) NPs (6 masculine, 5 feminine and 5 neuter). Both blocks used the same primes: 32 grammatical genderopaque Greek (L1) NPs. The German NPs did not involve correlations between phonological form and grammatical gender (Köpcke & Zubin 1984) as far as possible. The same also holds for the German material used in the ungrammatical NPs.8 None of the nouns in the German NPs had the same gender as its Greek translation to ensure that any effect obtained in the BLg block would not be due to translation priming. In the Gender-Congruent (CON) condition, each target NP was preceded by a prime NP with the same gender, and therefore the same definite determiner, in the WLg block or its translation equivalent determiner in the BLg block. In the Gender-Incongruent (INC) condition, each target NP was preceded by a prime NP with a different gender and hence a different definite determiner in the WLg block or a nontranslation equivalent determiner in the BLg block. Target NPs in the WLg and BLg blocks were paired based on frequency, syllable and letter length. In each block within each prime condition every prime NP 7.1.1. Material

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Table 1. Example set of grammatical prime and target material of Experiment 1

occurred only once. An example set of grammatical target and prime materials can be viewed in Table 1, while the Appendix provides the full list of grammatical prime and target NPs of Experiment 1. L1 and L2 target NPs were matched in terms of frequency of occurrence, syllable and letter length as far as possible (one-way ANOVAs: Frequency: F(1, 30) = .01, p > .9; Syllables: F(1, 30) = 19.23, p < .001; Letters: F(1, 30) = 10.28, p < .01). Likewise, prime NPs were matched for syllable and letter length as far as possible across the CON and INC experimental conditions (2 × 2 ANOVAs: Syllables: all Fs(1, 60) < 2.23, p > .14; Letters: all Fs(1, 60) < .03, p > .86). Table 2 presents the mean frequency and average length in syllables and letters of the critical grammatical items for Experiment 1. In addition, equal numbers of ungrammatical NPs were constructed by combining nouns with a gender-incongruent definite determiner (e.g., derMASC FeuerNEUT “the fire”). None, however, of the nouns from the grammatical NPs were used in the ungrammatical phrases. In all ungrammatical NPs, the nouns were combined equally often with their two incongruent definite determiners. The experimental design of these ungrammatical NPs was the same as that of the grammatical NPs since both were subjected to the same statistical analyses. That is, ungrammatical NPs were also presented in pairs of “targets” and “primes” in a WLg and a BLg block. In the CON condition, each “target” NP was preceded by an ungrammatical “prime” NP containing the same definite determiner in the

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ANGELIKI SALAMOURA Table 2. Frequency and average length in syllables and letters of the critical grammatical material of Experiment 1 Target nouns

Frequency∗ Syllables Letters

L1

L2

67.93 2.06 5.43

70.56 1.43 4.5

Prime nouns CON WLg 2.38 6.19

INC BLg 2.63 6.25

WLg 2.69 6.19

BLg 2.44 6.13

CON = Gender-Congruent, INC = Gender-Incongruent, WLg = Within-Language, BLg = Between-Languages. ∗ Number of occurrences per million, using the word form frequency estimate of the HNC (1999)

for the Greek stimuli and the German version of the CELEX Lexical Database (1998) for the German stimuli.

WLg block or its translation equivalent determiner in the BLg block. In the INC condition, each “target” NP was preceded by a “prime” NP containing a different definite determiner in the WLg block or a non-translation equivalent determiner in the BLg block. The definite determiner in the ungrammatical L2 NPs matched neither the L2 noun nor its Greek translation (e.g., derMASC FeuerNEUT = ϕωτια´ FEM “fire”) apart from two exceptions dieFEM HerzNEUT = καρδια´ FEM ´ “heart”; dasNEUT BriefMASC = γραµµα NEUT “letter”). An example set of ungrammatical “target” and “prime” material can be viewed in Table 3, while the full list of ungrammatical material is provided in the Appendix. The nouns of the L1 and L2 “target” NPs were matched in terms of frequency of occurrence and average length in syllables and letters as far as possible (one-way ANOVAs: Frequency: F(1, 30) = .01, p > .9; Syllables: F(1, 30) = 40.0, p < .001; Letters : F(1, 30) = 5.0, p < .01). Similarly, the nouns of the “prime” NPs were tallied for length in syllables and letters as closely as possible across the CON and INC conditions (2 × 2 ANOVAs: Syllables: all Fs(1, 60) < 1.23, p > .27; Letters: all Fs(1, 60) < .28, p > .59) (see Table 4). At the beginning of each block an additional 12 NPs (6 grammatical and 6 ungrammatical) served as practice material. In the BLg block half of the practice NPs were in Greek and half in German.

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Table 3. Example set of ungrammatical “prime” and “target” material of Experiment 1

Table 4. Frequency and average length in syllables and letters of the critical ungrammatical material of Experiment 1 Target nouns Frequency∗ Syllables Letters

L1

L2

70.31 2.25 5.43

68.13 1.25 4.62

Prime nouns CON WLg 2.87 6.75

INC BLg 2.81 6.87

WLg 2.62 6.68

BLg 2.68 6.56

CON = Determiner-Congruent, INC = Determiner-Incongruent, WLg = Within-Language, BLg = Between-Languages. ∗ Number of occurrences per million, using the word form frequency estimate of the HNC (1999)

for the Greek stimuli and the German version of the CELEX Lexical Database (1998) for the German stimuli.

7.1.2. Design The experimental design was comprised of two factors, with two levels each: language of target – prime pairs (within language [WLg] vs. between languages [BLg]) and gender congruency of target – prime pairs (Congruent [CON] vs. Incongruent [INC]). Both experimental factors were within participants. Language was between items and gender congruency was within items. Two experimental lists were created. Each list consisted of a total of 32 (16 L1 and 16 L2) grammatical target items and 32 (16 L1 and

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16 L2) ungrammatical “target” items. There were two prime versions (CON and INC) for each of the 32 grammatical and 32 ungrammatical items and each list contained only one version. For each list, two further sub-lists were created in which the order of the Language blocks was rotated as follows: Sub-List 1: WLg block, BLg block; Sub-List 2: BLg block, WLg block. This resulted in four experimental lists in total. Each participant was tested on one of the four lists and both versions of the 32 grammatical and 32 ungrammatical items were tested every two participants. The order of grammatical and ungrammatical trials within each list was individually randomized so that: (a) no more than three successive pairs of prime-target trials belonged to the same prime condition; (b) each pair of grammatical prime and target NP and each pair of ungrammatical “prime” and “target” NP occurred only once; (c) targets did not have the same gender on more than three successive pairs of trials. In total each list contained 152 trials (32 grammatical target NPs, 32 grammatical prime NPs, 32 ungrammatical “target” NPs, 32 ungrammatical “prime” NPs and 24 practice NPs). Participants were seated in front of a 14-inch PC monitor at a viewing distance of approximately 80 cm. The instructions were presented on screen (in L1 in the WLg block and in L2 in the BLg block). Participants had to press the GREEN button on a response box if they thought a phrase was grammatically correct or the RED button if they thought it was grammatically incorrect. (The dominant hand was always used for the “grammatical” response.) Their response had to be as fast and as accurate as possible. Each experimental trial started with the presentation of a fixation point (*) for 300 ms, followed by a NP which stayed on screen until the participant’s response. The ITI was 1,000 ms. All stimuli were presented in lowercase black letters against a white background in their singular, nominative form. Response latencies were measured to the nearest millisecond from the onset of each NP stimulus using SuperLab. At the end of the task participants were presented with a post-test list containing all L2 nouns that had been used in the BLg block and were 7.1.3. Procedure

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asked to write down the correct L2 definite determiner for each noun. This post-test questionnaire was used to determine which items had to be removed from the data analysis, as explained in the results section below. Each experimental session lasted approximately 30 min. 7.2. Results Target response latencies that fell into any of the following categories were excluded from the data analyses: (i) latencies from trials on which the wrong button was pressed, (ii) latencies from target trials that were “misprimed,” that is, preceded by a prime trial on which the wrong button was pressed, (iii) latencies longer than a preset time of 2.5 s, (iv) latencies that deviated more than 2.5 standard deviations (SD) from a participant’s or an item’s mean (outliers), (v) latencies from L2 target trials on which the correct button was pressed but the participant failed to produce the correct definite determiner for the same L2 noun in a post-test “gender check-up” questionnaire. The same but separate analyses were performed for grammatical and ungrammatical items. Of all data points in the grammatical trials, 7.3% were identified as erroneous (1.56% in the WLg and 5.77% in the BLg block) and 1.6% as long responses (0.4% in the WLg and 1.2% in the BLg block) and were excluded from further analysis. Table 5 displays the mean response latency and the percentage of errors and long responses for each prime condition in the grammatical trials. Byparticipant and by-item analyses of variance were performed on mean response latency and arcsine-transformed percentage of lost data for all conditions. For the response latencies, a 2(CON vs. INC) × 2(WLg vs. BLg) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of Language (F1 (1, 25) = 38.96, MSe = 42870.8, p < .001; F2 (1, 30) = 54.71, MSe = 17112.7, p < .001) and a significant main effect of Gender Congruency (F1 (1, 25) = 16.7, MSe = 6588.1, p < .001; F2 (1, 30) = 16.91, MSe = 4219.1, p < .001). Their interaction did not reach significance 7.2.1. Grammatical items

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(both Fs < .392). The mean RTs in Table 5 show that participants were faster at judging a target NP grammatical following a prime NP with the same gender than one with a different gender, and they were also faster at doing so in their L1 than L2 target responses. ANOVAs were also run on the lost data. The significant results of these analyses are reported below. A 2(CON vs. INC) × 2(WLg vs. BLg) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of Language in the Total Lost (= Errors + Long Responses) data rates (F1 (1, 25) = 9.83, MSe = .095, p < .01; F2 (1, 30) = 12.94, MSe = .045, p = .001) and the Total Error data rates (F1 (1, 25) = 4.33, MSe = .065, p < .05; F2 (1, 30) = 5.32, MSe = .034, p < .05), indicating that both the overall lost and error data were more numerous in L2 than L1. Most importantly, the gender-congruency effect was non-significant in all lost data analyses, suggesting that the gender manipulation of primes did not significantly affect the number of errors produced during grammaticality judgment in L1 or L2. Similarly, the off-line errors in the post-test “gender check-up” questionnaire (i.e., cases where participants failed to produce the correct definite determiner for the critical L2 nouns) Table 5. Results for the grammatical NPs of Experiment 1 (N = 26)

CON RT SD %Errora %Longb INC RT SD %Errora %Longb Difference

Within LG

Between LG

Difference

804 142 1.4 1

1071 219 11 2.9

267

883 139 4.8 0.5 79

1122 239 12 1.9 51

239

CON = Gender-Congruent, INC = Gender-Incongruent, RT = mean Response Time (in ms), SD = Standard Deviation. a Mean percentage of total error data. b Mean percentage of total long responses (outliers and responses over the 2.5 s cut-off

collapsed).

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were not significantly more numerous in the BLg INC (9.1% ) than BLg CON (7.2% ) condition (both Fs < .765). This finding implies that NPs appearing in the INC conditions were not inherently more difficult than those appearing in the CON conditions. After application of the five data exclusion criteria, one L2 item in the BLg block had more than 40% data points missing in one experimental condition and was discarded. To ensure exact comparability between the two blocks, the equivalent L1 item in the WLg block was discarded as well. Of all data points in the remaining items, 13.1% were identified as erroneous (2.7% in the WLg and 10.4% in the BLg block) and 2.1% as long responses (0.7% in the WLg and 1.4% in the BLg block) and were excluded from further analysis. Table 6 displays the mean response latency and the percentage of errors and long responses for each prime condition in the ungrammatical trials. For the response latencies, a 2(CON vs. INC) × 2(WLg vs. BLg) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of Language (F1 (1, 25) = 7.2.2. Ungrammatical items

Table 6. Results for the ungrammatical NPs of Experiment 1 (N = 26)

CON RT SD %Errora %Longb INC RT SD %Errora %Longb Difference

Within LG

Between LG

Difference

1035 159 3.6 1.5

1372 333 17.9 2.1

337

1044 165 7.2 1 9

1345 301 23.6 3.6 −27

301

CON = Determiner-Congruent, INC = Determiner-Incongruent, RT = mean Response Time (in ms), SD = Standard Deviation. a Mean percentage of total error data. b Mean percentage of total long responses (outliers and responses over the 2.5 s cut-off

collapsed).

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28.43, MSe = 93162.4, p < .001; F2 (1, 28) = 59.86, MSe = 19672.8, p < .001). The mean RTs in Table 6 show that participants were faster at judging a target NP ungrammatical in L1 than L2. Neither the main effect of Gender Congruency nor its interaction with Language reached significance (all Fs < .682). The pattern of results in the lost data analyses resembles that of the grammatical items. A 2(CON vs. INC) × 2(WLg vs. BLg) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of Language in the Total Lost (= Errors + Long Responses) data rates (F1 (1, 25) = 20.46, MSe = .105, p < .001; F2 (1, 28) = 37.21, MSe = .034, p < .001) and the Total Error data rates (F1 (1, 25) = 13.98, MSe = .098, p = .001; F2 (1, 28) = 18.55, MSe = .04, p < .001). In both cases the main effect of Gender Congruency approached or reached significance in the participant analysis (Total Lost data: F1 (1, 25) = 4.02, MSe = .034, p = .056; Total Error data: F1 (1, 25) = 6.04, MSe = .027, p < .05) but not in the item analysis (Total Lost data: F2 (1, 28) = 2.45, p > .12; Total Error data: F2 (1, 28) = 21.73, p > .19). Simple contrasts between CON and INC conditions in the participant analysis did not show any significant differences (Total Lost data: all Fs < 2.79, p > .1; Total Error data: all Fs < 3.48, p > .074). The difference between the BLg CON (8.8% ) and BLg INC (12.3%) conditions in terms of “wrong L2 determiner” errors in the post-test “gender check-up” questionnaire approached but did not reach significance (F1 (1, 25) = 3.66, MSe = .02, p = .067; F2 (1, 14) = 3.17, MSe = .016, p = .097). In summary, as for the grammatical items, the total lost and error data were more numerous in L2 than L1 for the ungrammatical items. Additionally, the lack of any statistically significant difference between CON and INC conditions in any of the (on- or off-line) analyses suggests that NPs presented in the INC conditions were not more prone to error than those presented in the CON conditions. 7.3. Discussion The results demonstrate that a gender-congruency effect is obtained within language (L1) and more importantly, between languages (L1-toL2) among L1 and L2 nouns that were neither translation-equivalents

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nor semantically related. Judging the grammaticality of an L1 NP was on average 79 ms faster following gender-congruent L1 prime NPs than gender-incongruent ones. Judging the grammaticality of an L2 NP was 51 ms faster in the gender-congruent than – incongruent conditions. The difference in the size of the effect between the two language conditions did not reach significance. As expected for L1-dominant bilinguals, the processing of L1 NPs (in terms of grammatical gender agreement between determiner and noun) was clearly faster than that of the L2 NPs. The results are in line with the language-shared gender hypothesis, which claims that gender specifications are shared within a language but also between languages (cf. Figures 1a & 1b), at least in the case of equivalent L1 and L2 gender specifications. Moreover, the fact that no equivalence of word form held between L1 prime NPs and L2 target NPs speaks against the localization of the effect at the word-form level. The results support the view that the effect takes place at the level of abstract gender features that are utilized during the computation of gender agreement in language comprehension. More importantly, these gender features appear to be shared within and across languages by gender controllers and agreement targets wherever possible. Due to the nature of the task, we should address the possibility that the effect obtained within and between languages might be the result of either repetition priming of the determiner forms in the WLg CON condition, or translation priming between the determiner forms in the BLg CON condition. However, the fact that no such effect was observed either within or between languages with the ungrammatical NPs which were also preceded by “prime” NPs containing the same determiner (WLg CON), a translation equivalent determiner (BLg CON) or a different determiner (WLg & BLg INC), excludes the aforementioned possibility. The cross-language priming could alternatively be viewed as within-language priming resulting from a translation strategy. For instance, being L1-dominant bilinguals, participants might have silently translated L2 target NPs into L1 and