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L2 Lexical Activation in the Bilingual Mental Lexicon: An Experimental Study
The aim of our research is to prove experimentally what kind of lexical activation takes
place when an individual with an unequal command of the two languages processes an L2 word.
The question we seek to answer is whether in this case the activation type will be restricted
to either the between-language or the within-language one (which will prove the “languagespecifi
c” hypothesis) or, similar with the case of fl uent bilinguals, both lexical systems will be
able to be activated simultaneously (the “language-independent” hypothesis). We also seek to
discover whether the activation type formed at the beginning of the L2 studying will remain
stable and invariable, or whether certain changes will occur along with the increase in the L2
profi ciency.
Two longitude experiments were conducted to test the validity of either of the hypotheses.
The free association technique was chosen as it is considered to be one of the most reliable
means to gain important insights into the mental lexicon structure. Since in the course of such
experiment only the reaction that occurs to the participant fi rst is fi xed, the strongest link of
the given stimulus in the mental lexicon is revealed. The associative reactions produced by the
participants provide an extensive account of diverse and polytypic links connecting the items in
the mental lexicon and objectively existing in the consciousness of a speaker.
Experiment 1
Participants: 55 students of the Perm Pedagogical University, Economic department, aged from
17 to 23, who have never studied English before (at school they were taught either German
or French). The course of studies lasts 2 years; the students are taught to perform minimum
communication in English as well as to read and understand authentic texts on their specialty
(Economics). By the end of studies the students are expected to possess elementary knowledge
of spoken English and intermediate knowledge in profi le reading and understanding. In general
over the whole period of studies this group of participants is considered as having a low level
of the L2 profi ciency.
Materials: 50 English words, selected according to the frequency criterion, the selection
method being a variation of directed verbal-associative line reproduction (Агибалов/Agibalov
1995) with the elements of psychometric scaling (Фрумкина/Frumkina 1971). Five teachers of
the Economic department were asked to make up a list of English words, used at the lessons
most frequently. The majority of the stimuli (about 80%) turned out to be high frequent for the
native speakers of English as well (according to the data of the British National Corpus 2003).
Design: Each participant was given an experimental form with the stimuli words printed
in column; spaces for the answers were left on the right of each stimulus. The task ran as
follows: “Respond to each stimulus with the fi rst word that occurs to you”. The participants
were instructed to react quickly, without much thinking over each word; the language code of
the reaction word was not restricted. The experiment was conducted four times with the same
group of participants during the whole period of their studies (2 years). The fi rst experiment
was carried out after the fi rst two months of studies, the next ones followed with an interval of
four months each. Such prolonged design enabled us to observe the dynamics of the L2 lexicon
construction: the process of a foreign word entry into the existing mental lexicon system,
various associative links formation and their further restructuring.
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