Lexical access in bilingual speakers of Maltese English

Abstract

This study attempted to shed light for the first time on the processes underlying lexical access in bilingual speakers of Maltese English. An experiment involving an auditory synonym task was designed and data collected from two groups of Maltese English bilinguals, varying in their proficiency in English. The task required the bilingual subjects to respond to given stimuli (differing in their lexical complexity and word-frequency count) by providing a synonym. The experiment focused mainly on the time required for lexical items within the bilinguals' mental lexicon to be accessed and realized through articulation. Attention was also given to the effect of lexical complexity on the rate of lexical access, both within the same language group, and between the two language groups tested. Linguistic phenomena related to lexical access, namely the tip of the tongue phenomenon and self monitoring mechanisms, were also investigated. It was found that whilst within the dominant English language group, naming latencies were effected by the lexical complexity of the stimuli, this was not the case for speakers in the dominant Maltese language group. No concrete evidence of facilitation or otherwise resulting from bilinguals' dominant language was found. The experiment also revealed that during lemma selection, high-frequency lemmas competing for selection are more likely to be selected for articulation than their lower frequency counterparts.