Active and dormant languages in the multilingual mental lexicon

ABSTRACT

Two experimental paradigms, a picture-naming task and a Stroop interference task, were employed to address the structure of the multilingual mental lexicon; more specifically, the process of multilingual non-selective lexical access. German-English-French speakers named objects in their native and most dominant language in a task that included a manipulation of triple (Wein, wine, vin) and double cognates (Beere, berry or Zitrone, citron). The vocal Stroop task was administered in both within- and between-language conditions to explore the interference patterns between the languages. In general, it was hypothesised that differing levels of language proficiency will play an integral role in the observed results. The speech onset times were measured for both tasks and pointed to complex interaction patterns. German and English were seen as the most active and prone to interference systems, whilst French appeared more as a dormant language that does not exert much influence on the other two systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Non-selective lexical access
• multilingualism
• picture-naming task
• Stroop paradigm
• interference

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.