The bilingual’s language modes

Grosjean's view of language mode This revolves around the idea of one specific linguistic code as forming the base system from which language is generated.

Monolingual-like, Mixed, Bilingual Bilinguals do not sometimes make conscious decisions, but most of the time since language production occurs so quickly that speakers have to do things without consciously being aware of what they are doing (Jessner, 2006).

The external trigger is quite often the interlocutor or other elements of context, such as location or topic.

Q: How about your language mode in this class?

Nam, Hyunjeong & van Vlack, Stephen Nam, Hyunjeong & van Vlack, Stephen. "Manifestations of language mode in lower level adult learners of English in relation to type of interlocutor." The Journal of Modern British & American Language & Literature. 30.1 (2012): 57-80. This study seeks to investigate factors affecting how Korean L2 learners' language modes vary across communication situations with two different types of interlocutors (with different L1s).

13 subjects 12 interviewers (The six native English speaking interviewers + six native speakers of Korean) Any instructions, preliminary tasks, or reminders were provided before the interview only in the target language and all use of a non-target language (Korean) was avoided. Any evidence of written Korean was removed from the interview settings.

Comparison of the subjects' bilingual mode in interviews with Koreans and native English speakers TW P L1 semantics L1 Syn Kon L1 use Pro Sum Sum % Sen W N V A O K 5276 1 26 5 13 3 17 71 18.82 E 6665 8 9 4 2 31 6.90 Note. TW: total words, P: L1 pragmatics, Sen: sentence level, W: word level, Syn: syntax, Kon: Konglish word, N: noun, V: verb, A: adjective, O: others. Pro: pronunciation, %: percentage, K: interview with Koreans, E: interview with native speakers of English

Results of interviews with Korean interviewers (native-like vs. noticeable Korean accents) Subjects Total words L1 activation Percentage EJ 254 1 0.39 ES 188 7 3.72 JY 514 3 0.58 PP 376 0.27 SO 566 10 1.77 JW 590 11 1.86 SY 718 6 0.84 JH 353 9 2.55 SJ 201 2 1.00 SH 347 8 2.31 Mean 405.84 5.46 1.45

The interlocutors' language itself may be attributed as playing a role in the subjects' language mode Ethnicity may have an effect on language mode in that Korean ethnicity seems to trigger the subjects' L1 (English-like Konglish words found more in conversations with native English speakers)

L2 Mental Lexicon

Mental lexicon --- “not a fixed dictionary with a set amount of information about each word, but an active system in which new links are perpetually being formed”(Aitchison 1994). It should be noted that the concept of lexicon needs to be considered in a metaphorical way, rather than as denoting a physical location.

Access to mental lexicon Meaning is the starting point of word production and phonological/phonetic form (orthographic form in reading) initiates word recognition (Aitchison 1994).

Lexical entry A great deal of information is stored in a lexical entry. Conceptual prerequisites for a lexical item’s use, such as its meaning and syntactic properties, are stored together in its lemma, while morphological and phonological properties are encoded as its word form in the lexical entry (Levelt 1989)

Different types of lexical items are stored in different ways Different types of lexical items are stored in different ways. Inflected forms of a particular word (e.g., pay, pays, paid, paying) are known to be stored in the same lexical entry (Levelt 1989; Clark 1993), while derived forms (e.g., pay, payable, payment, payer) are widely seen as occupying separate entries (Clark 1993).

Entries in the mental lexicon are seen as interconnected with each other in various ways, on the basis of both meaning and form (Levelt 1989). Two entries which share meaning are represented as connected and all entries linked in this way are seen as forming a semantic field covering the same conceptual domain (Clark 1993).

Nation (2001, p.321) suggests that high- frequency morphemic combinations like unable are stored as whole chunks, whereas low- frequency combinations like unambiguousness are re-created by rule on each occasion of use.

Organization of mental lexicon

Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart 1994) The conceptual level - the link between the shared concept and the L1 is stronger than the link between the concept and L2. The lexical level - the connection from L2 to L1 is stronger than that from L1 to L2. The existing connection between the L1 lexicon and conceptual memory becomes involved in the accessing of the subsequently acquired L2.

Kroll & Stewart (1994) suggest that mappings from words to concepts are asymmetric in bilingual memory and that the extent of the asymmetry varies in accordance with proficiency development. They found that translation from L1 to L2 was slower and influenced more by semantic variables than translation from L2 to L1.

Since the lemma information is copied from the L1 rather than constructed in the process of learning the L2 words, the L2 information may not become readily available or a certain constituent of information may easily be lost in transition (Jiang 2000).

The weak connections between the L2 and concepts prompt reference to L1 counterparts as a compensation for the lack of L2 conceptual resources, and thus meaning is accessed via L1 concept mediation (Kroll & Tokowicz 2001).

Language-selective vs. non-selective lexical access Language-selective: Lemma is tagged with a language label and that, therefore, the target lemma in the intended language can be selectively chosen.

Green’s Inhibitory Control (IC) model The “tag specification” is included in the conceptual representation and thus the inhibition of the competitors in the unintended language occurs at the lemma level. Although L1 words closely associated with the relevant concept become more activated in L2 access, they are more strongly suppressed.

Non-selective language access Evidence that both the bilingual’s target and non-target language are activated in parallel ---semantic interference. Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot and Schreuder (1998) ---picture-word interference experiments (the relevant Dutch lemma (L1), as well as semantically related Dutch words, was activated during the initial stages of the naming response in L2).

Evidence of the language non-selectivity Unintended L1 use in L2 production Poulisse & Bongaerts (1994) observed unintended L1 use and L1-L2 blending in their data from a 35 hour corpus from 45 Dutch L2 learners of three different proficiency levels (L1 words retain higher resting activation than target L2 words owing to their higher frequency and that this leads to the activation and the selection of the unintended language.

Working memory The working memory system is a capability to temporally store a certain amount of linguistic information for complex cognitive functions. The effects of the short-term phonological WM on long-term phonological learning have been extensively investigated (Papagno, Valentine & Baddeley 1991; Service 1992).

An individual’s ability to store information in the WM for later processing determines his success in both phonological and semantic language comprehension and production. As Daneman & Green (1986, p.2) suggest, the smaller the functional WM capacities individuals have, the less information from earlier reference becomes active in WM.