Bilingualism: How Different Languages Sculpt our Mental Lexicon Volume 5 - Issue 3

Joanna Riera and Jenny Cubells Serra*

• Department of Social Psychology, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain

Received:September 28, 2021   Published: October 12, 2021

Corresponding author: Gustavo Lopez Estivalet, Federal University of Paraiba, Laboratory of Language Processing, Brazil

DOI: 10.32474/JAAS.2021.05.000214

 

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Abstract

What is bilingualism? How different languages sculpt our mental lexicon?

The aim of the present paper is to present important concepts about the bilingualism definitions regarding the organization, representation, and processing of words in the mental lexicon. For this, first, the main concepts regarding bilingualism, such as Mother Tongue, Foreign Language, First/Second Language, early/late and simultaneous/consecutive bilingualism are investigated and discussed. Afterwards, different models of mental lexicon are presented and described in the light of bilingualism. Finally, evidence relating bilingualism and psycholinguistics are reviewed in the different linguistic levels: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. As the main result, it is proposed that the main variables which influence the organization, representation, and processing of word in the bilingual mental lexicon depend on the age of acquisition or learning of the different language, the proficiency level achieved by the speaker in each language, the frequency of the use of the different languages, the specific typology of the language spoken, and the similarities between the different languages spoken by the individual.

Keywords: Bilingualism; First/Second Language; Language Processing; Mental Lexicon; Cognates

Abstract| Bilingualism| The Mental Lexico| Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism| References|