Mental Lexicon

A collaborative learning approach has been identified to lessen anxiety and allow more comprehensible inputs to be processed cognitively to result in meaningful outputs. This study specifically examines the effectiveness of the collaborative learning approach and its best fit model supplemented with several techniques to improve students’ mastery of the mental lexicon of the word association. This Classroom Action Research involved 60 college students in their senior years in Institut Teknologi Kalimantan. The data collection involved two cycles in which each cycle employed planning, implementation, analysing learning activities and learning outcome and finally reflection. To gain insight through each cycle, a cloze test and a survey were administered. Furthermore, the result was analysed qualitatively and the finding reveals a significant improvement in terms of the mental lexicon of word association repertoire especially in cycle 2. The percentage of the students meeting the crite...

This paper explores the phenomenon of syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift which refers to the typical lexical development of adult native speakers who are found to produce fewer syntagmatic and phonological responses as they grow up and a greater number of paradigmatic responses as their native language develops. The study aims to investigate the existence of the phenomenon in both the L1 and the L2 and to assess its implications for the bilingual mental lexicon. The first section of the paper starts with a critical discussion on the phenomenon of the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift and points to research which suggests that the shift in response type should be attributed to the development of a word in the lexicon of a native speaker or foreign language learner, regardless of the status of the language (L1 or L2) or the overall level of proficiency of the person involved. The study analyses the word associations of a group of first-year students, all advanced learners of English, at the School of English of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The word-association test included 50 English words selected from the Kent-Rosanoff list and their translation equivalents in Greek. The next section discusses methodological problems related to the classification of the responses in the paradigmatic or syntagmatic category, arguing for a set of well-defined standards that would allow for a reliable classification of responses. The word¬-association data indicate that there are certain similarities in the L1 and L2 lexical operations of advanced learners; the subjects produce statistically higher numbers of paradigmatic responses and lower numbers of syntagmatic responses in both the L1 and L2, thus pointing to the existence of the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift in the present study. The results are interpreted in terms of the frequency of the stimulus words used in both languages –something which points to the familiarity of the subjects with the words used. Moreover, evidence of a similar semantic lexical organization in the L1 and L2 lexica comes from the fact that the subjects produce approximately equivalent proportions of semantic responses (both syntagmatic and paradigmatic) in both languages. The few phonologίcal (clang) responses in the L2 seem to reveal the more restricted L2 lexical knowledge of particular subjects with respect to certain stimuli which appeared to be unfamiliar to them; these findings seem to indicate that formal processing plays an important role in the early stages of the integration of a word in the L2 mental lexicon, followed by semantico-pragmatic processing as the word becomes well-integrated in the lexicon.

This is the first book-length analysis of the way that Persian compound verbs are processed in the mental lexicon. The study of this process offers ways to infer how these verbs are stored, organized, and accessed, drawing on psycho-linguistic theories of polymorphic word processing as well as linguistic theories of complex predicates.

Un élément clé pour l’étude du lexique mental dans l’apprentissage du vocabulaire des langues est celle du raisonnement par analogie qui entame deux phénomènes très caractéristiques dans l’apprentissage des langues dû à la diversité de celles-ci -le transfert et l’interférence-. Comme dans autres domaines cognitifs, le raisonnement par analogie est propre de la nature de l’être humain. Certes, cette manière de raisonner peut être outil pour résoudre certains problèmes propres à l’apprentissage comme dans le transfert positif, mais dans certain cas il peut nuire à une confusion et le rendre problématique et déclencher ce qu’on appel « une interférence ». Les systèmes linguistiques divergent en phonologie, en syntaxe, en grammaire, etc, et dans tous ces aspects l’apprenant des langues rencontre des similitudes et des différences par rapport à son système linguistique et le système linguistique de la langue cible. Ce qui rendre très fréquent l’usage de raisonnement par analogie en découvrant le fonctionnement de la nouvelle langue par rapport à la sienne. Le but de cet article est de décortiquer la nature de cette analogie, et plus spécifiquement sont côte problématique qui est « l'interférence »; nous nous demandons quels sont les facteurs qui favorisent telle démarche. C’est important aussi de savoir, dans quel degré l’apprentissage d’une langue influence l’apprentissage d’une autre, à savoir L2 sur L3. De la même manière si les habitudes que quelqu’un a de la langue maternelle menacent interférer dans les habitudes que quelqu’un doit se créer de la langue cible, et si le mélange de ces deux habitudes est la conséquence directe des interlangues. Finalement, une question qui s’est posée depuis les années 50 avec l’entreprise des chercheurs sur le CAH (contrast Analysis Hypothesis) est de savoir si en connaissant tous ces points clés de l'interférence des langues ils pourraient dans une certaine mesure être évités au moment de l'enseignement et de l’apprentissage de la langue cible et ainsi conduire à un enseignement des langues plus propre et moins encombrant avec des erreurs.

FORMACIÓN DE PALABRAS Y ENSEÑANZA DEL ESPAÑOL LE/L2 offers a unique combination of theory and practice that guides the reader through the main processes of word formation in Spanish. It provides a detailed analysis of the role of lexical creation in the acquisition of L2 Spanish vocabulary, as well as over a hundred practical self-reflection activities.

Key features:

• Comprehensive theoretical explanations of word formation, including theoretical and pedagogical principles and their implementation in the teaching of L2 Spanish;
• Step-by-step pedagogical introductions to the full range of lexical creation mechanisms in Spanish language, including prefixation, emotive and nonemotive suffixation and composition;
• Carefully-chosen lists of relevant issues on lexical morphology with immediate applicability to the teaching of L2 Spanish;
• Guided activities with an answer key, which helps the reader to connect theory with practice and to become familiar with the key aspects of Spanish lexical morphology;
• Guidelines on how to tackle the teaching of Spanish word formation and vocabulary in an effective and engaging way.
Written in a clear and accessible manner, Formación de palabras y enseñanza del español LE/L2 is an essential resource for teachers of Spanish at all levels. It is also an excellent reference book for language teachers who wish to integrate word formation into the teaching of the Spanish language.

This is an updated, improved version of my BA thesis from 2013. Only cosmetic changes were made; the meaning of the sentences is unaffected.

I researched Michael Ullman’s claims about the explanatory power of his declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar, which states that lexical information is stored in declarative memory, whereas grammatical rules (in this case, verbal inflection) are accessed “in real time” using procedural memory. I reviewed existing literature on the subject and ultimately found that even though Ullman’s model is neurologically accurate, it is not sufficiently powerful to explain the psycholinguistics of verb inflection.

English translation available.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on recent studies of bilingualism and emotions to argue for three types of modifications to the current models of the bilingual lexicon. The first modification involves word categories: I will show that emotion words need to be considered as a separate class of words in the mental lexicon, represented and processed differently from abstract and concrete words. The second modification involves conceptual representations: I will demonstrate that emotion concepts vary across languages and that bilinguals' concepts may, in some cases, be distinct from those of monolingual speakers. The third modification involves emotionality: I will argue that emotionality is an important feature of the bilingual lexicon, where different languages and word types display different levels of emotionality. I will also show how differential emotionality affects code-switching and language choice in bi-and multilinguals. The purpose of this paper is to draw on recent studies of bilingualism and emotions to argue that future models of the bilingual lexicon need to acknowledge – where relevant – not only linguistic and cognitive but also affective aspects of the lexicon. I will begin with a discussion of definitions of emotion and emotion-laden words. Then, I will argue that the incorporation of the affective dimension in the mental lexicon needs to take place on three levels. On the lexical level, emotion and emotion-laden words need to be considered as a separate class of words in the mental lexicon, because recent research shows that these words are represented and processed differently from abstract and concrete words. On the conceptual level, models need to address cross-linguistic differences in emotion concepts and ways in which bilinguals' representations may differ from those of monolingual speakers. On the processing level, models need to incorporate the affective processing dimension, recognizing affective priming effects and differences in emotionality across bilinguals' languages and word types. Unlike the study of visual or auditory processing, the study of emotion and emotion-laden words and of affective processing cannot be limited to the lab, because words do not have immutable meanings or stable affective dimensions – rather their meanings and affective connotations are internalized, constructed, and negotiated in context. Consequently, where possible, I will triangulate the findings of laboratory studies of bilingual affective processing and representation with findings of sociolinguistic, ethnographic, and clinical studies. In some cases I will also appeal to bi-and multilinguals' self-reports to complement the experimental data, to highlight the human dimension of this research, and to draw on people's insights about the interplay between

This research focuses on the investigation of paradigmatic and sintagmatic links in the Russian child mental lexicon. We examined free associations distributions by analysis of variance. Paradigmatic associations are fairly often. Sintagmatic associations occur rarely. The results of the analysis highlight the influence of factor "gender" on the amount of paradigmatic and sintagmatic associations. Sintagmatic associations are more frequent for Russian boys. Paradigmatic associations are more frequent among Russian girls associative reactions. Their mental lexicon structure is similar to Russian adults one.

The term Mental Lexicon, sometimes seen as an online version of a dictionary, is often taken to refer to the part of our language system that hosts the word forms we know and their corresponding meanings. Unlike a dictionary, words in the Mental Lexicon are not organized strictly alphabetically (although speech errors such as malapropisms, e.g., appointment –> apartment, suggest that words having a form relationship are somehow relatedly represented) but stored according to principles of meaning, form, frequency, and possibly other aspects. Form refers to the phonological make-up of words, but also to orthography (spelling) or gestures. Moreover, words must be mentally represented and organized in an easily accessible way to support efficient processing —both in comprehension and production. However, how are words represented and connected to each other in the Mental Lexicon? It is clear that our brain must have the capacity to store word forms and their meanings because understanding and producing words are important skills of the human language user and both processes involve form and meaning. Theories of language comprehension and language production include ideas about the organization and representation of words in the Mental Lexicon. Comprehension and production is one important dichotomy reflected in this article. Another contrast is the difference between representation and processing. Representation of units in the Mental Lexicon, be it bundles of words, individual words, morphemes, syllables, phonemes, or features, is rather static. When we learn a word, it is important to store the correct pronunciation, spelling, or gestures with the particular meaning. Processing, however, is more dynamic. When we hear or produce a word, a number of (dynamic) cognitive processes are being executed that operate on (static) representations in the Mental Lexicon. When we hear an acoustic signal corresponding to words we know, our language comprehension system can recognize those words and map them to corresponding meanings resulting in speech comprehension. A similar process takes place when we read text written in a language we can read. Visual word forms are being recognized and mapped onto meanings leading to text comprehension. If word forms are not stored in our brain, we cannot recognize them and thus we are not able to understand what is being said or written down. This happens when we listen to speech or read words in a language we do not know. When we produce speech, we start with the intention to convey a certain message making access to stored information in the Mental Lexicon necessary. The exact information that is being stored in the Mental Lexicon and how it is stored and accessed, is still being investigated. This bibliography will especially be concerned with features of form representation of words, i.e., morphology and phonology, and less so with the representation of meaning, i.e., semantics.

The purpose of the qualitative research was to assess models of education developed for the study to investigate how and when to incorporate second and third languages into the curriculum to improve language acquisition. Research indicates that L3 enhances and reinforces L2 and L1. The stratified systematic grounded theory study explored the perspectives of neurolinguists, psycholinguists, sociolinguists, and interdisciplinary education researchers to derive variables for constructing a new model of education. The outcome of the Internet survey revealed that 100% of the participants agreed that education must change and that teacher training must improve. Variables from the cross-disciplinary data contributed to the construction of an integrated model of multilingual education consisting of four primary models and other models to serve as tools for designing curriculum, instruction, and assessment as well as determining demographics and student meta-analysis of language abilities and storage in the brain. The first model emerged from the data to offer multilingual principles of education. The other primary models are macro, meso, and micro models. The macro model represents schools, instruction, assessment, and the curriculum cycle. The meso model depicts the developmental domains of the individual learner and includes a cyclical equation. The micro model delineates multilingual processing in the brain based on neurolinguistic research, variables from the current study, and Kees de Bot's bilingual adaptation of Levelt's language processing model. Recommendations include the incorporation of notional-functional pragmatic-aesthetic concepts as depicted in the models developed for the study and enhanced by input from published researchers with unique language and research repertoires who were located on four continents.

As a human product, language reflects the psychological experience of man (Radden and Dirven, 2007). One model of language and human cognition in general is connectionism, by many linguists regarded as mathematical and, therefore, too reductive. This opinion trend seems to be reversing, however, due to the fact that many cognitive researchers begin to appreciate one attribute of network models: feature emergence.  In the course of a network simulation properties emerge that were neither inbuilt nor intended by its creators (Elman, 1998); in other words, the whole becomes more than just the sum of its parts. Insight is not only drawn from the network's output, but also from the means that the network utilizes to arrive at the output.
It may seem obvious that the events of life should be meaningful for human beings, yet there is no widely accepted theory as to how we derive that meaning. The most promising hypothesis regarding the question how the world is meaningful to us is that of embodied cognition (cf. Turner 2009), which postulates that the functions of the brain evolved so as to ‘understand’ the body, thus grounding the mind in an experiential foundation. Yet, the relationship between the body and the mind is far from perspicuous, as research insight is still intertwined with metaphors specific for the researcher’s methodology (Eliasmith 2003). It is the aim of this paper to investigate the conceptual metaphor in a manner that will provide some insight into  the role that objectification, as defined by Szwedek (2002), plays in human cognition, and identify one possible consequence of embodied cognition.
If the mechanism for concept formation, or categorization of the world, resembles a network, it is reasonable to assume that evidence for this is to be sought in language.  Let us then postulate the existence of a network mechanism for categorization and concept formation present in the human mind and initially developed to cope with the world directly accessible to the early human (i.e. tangible). Such a network would convert external inputs to form an internal, multi modal representation of a perceived object in the brain. The sheer amount of available information and the computational restrictions of the brain would force some sort of data compression, or a computational funnel. It has been shown that a visual perception network of this kind can learn to accurately label patterns (Elman, 1998) and form prototypes. What is more, the compression of data facilitated the recognition of prototypes of a given pattern category rather than its peripheral representations, an emergent property that supports the prototype theory of the mental lexicon (cf. Radden and Dirven, 2007).
The present project proposes that, in the domain of cognition, the process of objectification, as defined by Szwedek (2002), would be an emergent property of such a system, or that - if an abstract notion is computed by a neural network designed to cope with tangible concepts - the data compression mechanism would require the notion to be conceptualized as an object to permit further processing. The notion of emergence of meaning from the operation of complex systems is recognised as an important process in a number of studies on metaphor comprehension (Terai 2008, Utsumi 2005) as well as cognitive models of mind. Feature emergence is said to occur when a non-salient feature of the target and the vehicle becomes highly salient in the metaphor (Utsumi 2005). Therefore, for example, should objectification emerge as a feature in the metaphor KNOWLEDGE IS A TREASURE, the metaphor would be characterised as having more features of an object than either the target or vehicle alone.
This is investigated through a psychological experiment where 79 participants were asked to evaluate either conceptual metaphors or their components in terms of features on four seven-point scales (one of which was the „object-ness”, or tangibility of the metaphor target). The metaphor target domains were abstract concepts, and source domains were concrete, tangible phenomena. Response was measured for target words in metaphorical and non-metaphorical contexts. Statistical analysis (ANOVA) shows that there is a significant increase in perceived concreteness for the metaphorical condition, with no relevant differences across the primed and non-primed groups of subjects.
Therefore, the existence of an evolutionary neural mechanism for categorisation is carefully put forward; one that is able to cope with both concrete and abstract notions, the by-product of which are the abstract language-related phenomena, i.e. metaphors. The model presented in this paper aims at providing a unified account of how the various types of phenomena, objects, feelings etc. are categorized in the human mind, drawing on empirical evidence from a language based study.

"This paper compares various approaches to argument structure. We start out presenting the lexical proposal that we want to defend in this paper. We then introduce phrasal proposals that are common in Construction Grammar. A historical section describes the oscillation between early lexical proposals in Categorial Grammar, phrasal approaches in phrase structure grammar (early Transformational Grammar, GPSG) back to lexical approaches in HPSG and Minimalism. We argue that there were good reasons for returning to lexical models and that the respective issues are not addressed in phrasal approaches. We go on discussing approaches that assume that sematnically compatible verbs are inserted into phrasal constructions and point out that lexical specification of valence plays an important role in various levels of description and that phrasal models can not account for this. A similar criticism applies to so-called Neodavidsonian approaches, which are discussed in a separate section.

We will show that certain relations between constructions cannot be captured with inheritance or unification but require transformations or lexical rules, and hence in non-transformational syntax the lexical approach is the only option.

Three sections are devoted to arguments from language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and statistics. We show that contrary to frequent claims the respective experiments do not provide evidence for phrasal constructions.

We conclude that argument structure properties should be represented together with lexical items. "

The social networking website Facebook offers to its users a feature called “status updates” (or just “status”), which allows users to create Microposts directed to all their contacts, or a subset thereof. Readers can respond to Microposts, or in addition to that also click a “Like” button to show their appreciation for a certain Micropost. Adding semantic meaning in the sense of unambiguous intended ideas to such Microposts. We can make a start towards semantic web by adding semantic annotation to web resources. Ontology are used to specify meaning of annotations. Ontology provide a vocabulary for representing and communicating knowledge about some topic and a set of semantic relationships that hold among the terms in that vocabulary. For increasing the efficiency of ontology based application there is aneed to develop a mechanism that reduces the manual work in developing ontology. Inthis paper, we proposed Microposts’ ontology construction. In this paper we present a method that extracts meaningful knowledge from microposts shared in social platforms. This process involves different steps for the analysis of such microposts (extraction of keywords, named entities and their matching to ontological concepts).

“My child, why do you weep? What grief has come upon your phrenes (φρένες)? Speak—conceal not in noos (νόος) in order that we both may know,” so speaks Achilles’ mother Thetis as the fierce warrior weeps tears of wrath on the beaches of Troy (Il. 1.362-363). To be sure, noos likely translates as mind in English in the above passage. However, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey include a total of eight such words that may be rendered as mind, heart, or spirit: noos (νόος), thymos (θυμός), psykhe (ψυχή), phrenes (φρένες), prapides (πρᾰπῐ́δες), kardia (κᾰρδῐ́ᾱ), kradie (κρᾰδῐ́η), ker (κῆρ), and etor (ἦτορ). This complicated situation with Greek translations of mind is at the heart of this study’s empirical investigation. To wit, what is mind in the Il. compared to the Od.? The present investigation sought to quantify and compare the use of mental language in the Homeric epics by means of computational linguistics. Prior scholarly investigations have been mostly qualitative; the few quantitative studies conducted utilized miniscule sample sizes of English translations. Two studies were conducted. 17 translators who translated both the Il. and Od. into English were selected (within-subjects design). The texts were sanitized and compiled for lexical frequency analyses in Voyant, a digital linguistic analysis tool. Study 1 compared how often mental language terms appeared in both works. Results showed that total word density of mental language increased significantly from the Il. to the Od. in both English translations as well as in the original Greek version. Study 2 compiled an English glossary of mental language terms and counted the frequencies for the 34 total works. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to compare the mean mental language densities of the Il. and Od. across 17 translators. There was a significant difference in the mean densities for the Il. (M = 68.2, SD = 8.9) and Od. (M = 91.9, SD = 11.6) conditions; t(16) = -17.798, N = 17, p < .001, d = -4.317. Further correlational tests as well as ANCOVA were conducted in order to determine if various factors could explain the large effect size. No significant results were observed or relevant. All hypotheses were supported. These data suggest that the Od. contains much more mental language than the Il. Implications and limitations are discussed.

In this book, the study of interpretation is pursued with the double aim of examining the role of interpretation in initiating, processing and receiving text constructs, and exploring  meta-textual constructs such as self-attribution, text integrity, author identity, and readability scales. Among other things, the author demonstrates how hermeneutic filtering enables academic discourse to maintain a delicate balance that post-production readers highlight or dispute.
  In translation, the translator undertakes post-production and pre-production processing, and this extent, inter alia, translation is a viable candidate for studying the relevance of interpretation to text constructs. Hence,, the book serves as a textbook and/or a reference for students and researchers in Text Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics and Translation Theory and Practice.

A growing number of scholars regard language as social co-ordination. Not only does this overcome stale debate about whether langauge is cognitive or communicative but it opens up new thinking about its evolutionary history. Focusing on populations, the paper outlines and critiques Merlin Donald’s view of the human mind. It endorses the view that the evolutionary emergence of language can be traced to mimesis or what, twenty years ago, was called the “ability to produce conscious self-initiated representational acts that are intentional” (Donald, 1991: 168). However, ecological critique rejects the original theory’s appeal to symbolic models. I therefore argue that, while Donald is regarded as likely to be correct about the evolutionary basis of language (and languaging), it is possible to simplify his account. Instead of positing 3 evolutionary thresholds (mimesis, language and writing), mimetic skills may themselves be sufficient to ground all the slow processes of human cognition. Indeed, like tool-making, they probably co-evolved with vocal coordination. As cultures developed tools together with ‘public language’, we gained skills in using distributed cognition –ways of living that were later extended by external resources such as, for example, writing, religions, laws and technologies.

Focusing on the phonological neighborhood defined by Turnbull and Peperkamp (2017: 83) as “two words are neighbors of each other if they differ by the deletion, addition or substitution of one and only one segment,” we analyzed the characteristics of phonological neighborhood networks (PNN) in English and Korean words in order to investigate the interrelation between words in these two languages. Here, a PNN is assumed to represent the mental lexicon. In the case of English, 33,329 high-frequency words were selected as target words from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (Davies 2008), and in the case of Korean, 32,698 high-frequency words were selected as target words from SJ-RIKS (Kang and Kim 2009). Using R (R Core Team 2016) and Pajek (de Nooy et al. 2011), we formed the PNN matrices of both languages, and using these matrices, measured the key indicators of each language’s PNN, such as the number and size of sub-PNNs in each PNN, the proportion of the giant component size, average shortest path length, average clustering coefficient, and assortative mixing by degree (AMD). Through a quantitative analysis of these key indicators, it was shown that the network measurements reflect a language particularity between English and Korean, and at the same time the two PNNs shared the characteristics of a “small-world network” (Watts and Strogatz 1998) and a high value of AMD.

In a bilingual environment, as a rule, different places and objects have names in both languages (e.g. Hungarian Kolozsvár – Romanian Cluj-Napoca, Hungarian Kassa – Slovakian Košice, Hungarian Duna – Slovakian Dunaj – German Donau; besides macro-toponyms, we could list here also a large number of micro-names). These corresponding names may emerge independently from each other, or through the translation or changing of the name. My presentation gives an overview of how these names and name pairs may be represented in the mind and mental lexicon of speakers familiar with both name forms. The emergence and continuous development of name usage is examined from three different aspects, which are closely related, in fact they belong together and are distinguished merely for the purpose of the study: firstly, I look at the names from the aspect of the name users and the community, secondly, from the aspect of the places, i.e. that of the mental map, and thirdly, from the aspect of the toponymic system. The connectionist holistic model will be applied with respect to internal mental processes. According to this model, different cognitive processes are not independent of each other in the mind, and—like most representations of a somewhat higher complexity—also toponyms are represented as a network of different elements of knowledge

The number of words a native speaker of a language knows is incredibly vast. However, this is not just word that represents mental lexicon. Words have properties to which in a very complex way they are associated. This paper reviews the related literature and different perspectives on what mental lexicon is, what is its organization, how words are related in the mental lexicon. It has also been discussed how second language mental lexicon is stored in the brain.

Цель исследования — мультидисциплинарное изучение феномена полисемии (многозначности) языковых единиц с помощью теоретических, экспериментальных и статистических методов. Хотя полисемии посвящено большое количество работ, это явление ранее не исследовалось комплексно. Коллективом авторов было проведено исследование, которое сочетало элементы словарного описания, статистического анализа, опросов, а также изучение электроэнцефалограмм и движений глаз. Исследование показало, что при развитии полисемии используется большее количество различных семантических сдвигов, помимо хорошо известных метафоры и метонимии. Эти сдвиги составляют сложную иерархическую систему и часто комбинируются друг с другом при образовании новых значений. Наше восприятие значения как нового связано с когнитивным «расстоянием», которое различается для разных типов сдвигов: так, метафорически образованное значение воспринимается как более далекое от исходного, чем метонимическое значение. Словарное представление значений только отчасти коррелирует с устройством ментального лексикона и с частотностью разных значений. Лексикографическое представление, основанное на семантических принципах, более удобно для восприятия, чем представление, основанное на частоте употребления. В ходе исследования возникли новые вопросы, в частности, различаются ли представления далекой и близкой метонимии в нашем ментальном лексиконе.

En el marco de la lingüística actual parece ya posible contemplar el lenguaje escrito como un sistema dinámico adaptativo que se configuraría a partir del uso en el lexicón mental de los usuarios; si bien en el devenir evolutivo de la expresión escrita, dada la mayor vinculación de esta a los contextos formales, parecen cobrar especial protagonismo la planificación de la variación y la selección artificial. En la propuesta de modelización teórica que desarrollamos estas últimas acciones se podrían vincular funcionalmente al uso lingüístico por medio de actitudes lingüísticas inherentes generadas en los procesos de lectoescritura, de modo que no anularían el carácter adaptativo del sistema. Diversas motivaciones funcionales, dependientes en último término del contexto sociocultural y ambiental, incidirían de formas diversas en la configuración del lexicón, y este reaccionaría adaptándose a las alteraciones mediante movimientos espontáneos de acercamiento y alejamiento de las unidades lingüísticas implicadas. Estos desplazamientos, a su vez, se fundamentarían en último término en ocho posibles movimientos y contramovimientos básicos de extensión y retracción gráfica que se describen en este trabajo y que permiten alterar la arquitectura relacional del sistema en lo que concierne a las expresiones gráficas correspondientes. La adaptación, en todo caso, se vería modulada por la sedimentación alcanzada por el tipo de funcionamiento más característico de cada escritura en su ámbito de uso social, en desarrollos que cabe interpretar como procesos de construcción de nicho. Palabras clave: sistemas de escritura, resolución, construcción de nicho, actitudes lingüísticas inherentes

Within the framework of current linguistics it seems now possible to regard written language as a dynamic adaptive system which would be shaped in the mental lexicon of users from the experiences of the linguistic usage. Despite that, planning of variation and artificial selection seem to play a major role in written expression evolutionary dynamics because of the stronger linkage of writing to formal contexts. In this author’s proposal for a theoretical model, those actions would be functionally linked to usage by means of inherent value linguistic attitudes generated during the processes of reading and writing, so that they don’t invalidate the adaptive nature of the system. Various functional motivations, ultimately dependent on the sociocultural and environmental context, would occasionally affect the lexicon organization; and the lexicon would reciprocate by spontaneously approaching and distancing the involved linguistic units in order to adapt to the adjustments. Those shifts, in turn, would be founded on eight possible basic movements and countermovements of graphical extension and retraction which are described in this work. They allow to locally modifying the system’s relational architecture, so that the written expressions can adapt. Adaptation, in any case, would be modulated by the sedimentation achieved by the functional trends in their social environment, in procedures that can be regarded as niche construction processes.

O principal objetivo do Léxico do Português é oferece um corpus psicolinguístico do português brasileiro (PB) que disponibilize o máximo de informações metalinguísticas e psicolinguísticas sobre as palavras do PB. O Léxico do Português foi construído com o intuito de ser um corpus aberto, com acesso livre, consultado em uma plataforma simples, intuitiva e dinâmica através da internet. A partir de uma determinada pesquisa, os resultados são apresentados de forma organizada e hierárquica, contendo dados metalinguísticos e psicolinguísticos das palavras ou grupos de palavras pesquisados.

In the present paper, Multilink (Dijkstra & Rekké, 2010) was tested, a computational model of isolated word translation that integrates theoretical notions from the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and the BIA+ model for bilingual word recognition (Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002). Simulations were conducted, using the stimulus materials from a word translation production experiment by Pruijn (2015, in collaboration with Peacock). The model’s performance to the reaction times in this experiment was then compared to empirical data from Pruijn and from Christoffels, De Groot, and Kroll (2006). In these experiments, Dutch speakers of English had to translate printed Dutch or English words as accurately and quickly as possible into English or Dutch, respectively. Each input item was a high or low frequency word that could be a cognate or noncognate. Simulations of the experimental data were then analyzed through 4 sets of statistical tests: Spearman's rank correlation, analysis of variance, generalized regression modelling, and divergence testing. The simulations showed a strong cognate effect (cognates are translated faster than noncognates) and a weak frequency effect (high-frequency words are translated faster than low-frequency words). However, the simulation neither exhibited a statistically significant translation direction effect (L1→L2 translation equivalents should be translated faster than L2→L1), nor were certain experimentally-observed interactional effects. Although Multilink did produce translations with a high level of accuracy, the simulated results did not match those of the empirical data in detail. A number of adjustments and modifications of the model will be necessary to obtain better fits between model and experimental data. The findings are interpreted and compared to the predictions made by other theoretical models (RHM, BIA+). Suggestions for future experiments and model adaptations are discussed.

Keywords: computational model, simulation, bilingualism, lexical facilitation, Multilink, translation, latency, visual word naming, mental lexicon, cognate, interactive activation, lexical access, recognition & production, BIA+, RHM.

"The aim of this study is to experimentally investigate Evaluative Morphology (EM) in an Italian agrammatic speaker. In the neurolinguistic literature, to our
knowledge, there are no previous attempts to systematically analyze possible deficits, specifically concerning EM in agrammatic speakers.
Previous theoretical works argued that Italian EM should be considered
as a specific type of lexical process, different from both inflection and
derivation (Scalise, 1984). In recent years, there have been many
works devoted to the study of EM from a syntactic viewpoint (e.g. Cinque
2006, 2011; Ott 2011, De Belder, Faust and Lampitelli 2009, 2012). Data from agrammatic production are crucial for checking the validity of a syntactic approach to evaluative markers. The results show that our agrammatic (Crossed) aphasic speaker doesn’t have a specific deficit for EM. This fact seems to weaken a syntactic approach to EM, where e.g. evaluative markers are treated as functional heads within an extended projection. In fact, given that agrammatic speakers are standardly assumed to be impaired with the production of morphosyntactic functional items (see e.g. Berndt & Caramazza, 1980; Miceli et al., 1989), words with evaluative morphemes appears to be stored in the lexicon and not syntactically derived."

This paper presents an empirical study investigating the relationship between first language
(L1) lexical organisation and second language (L2) vocabulary development. The
participants consisted of 191 native Arabic learners of English as a foreign language (EFL)
within higher secondary education in Saudi Arabia. To conduct the study, two receptive
vocabulary size tests (L1 Arabic-Lex and L2 English X-Lex) were used with an L1 lexical
organisation test (ALOT) which was designed for the purpose of the study. Learners' L1
lexical organisation scores were found to be associated with their L1 and L2 receptive
vocabulary scores. However, the strong correlation found between lexical organisation and
the size of the lexicon in learners’ L1 might well suggest that lexical networks and the size of
the lexicon are one unified system. Nevertheless, to find any potential interaction between L1
lexical organisation and size on L2 vocabulary acquisition, ‘moderation’ analyses were
performed. Moderation results revealed three levels of interaction; low, average and high.
The low level shows that a low level of lexical organisation leads to low levels of L1 and L2
vocabulary size. The same relationship trend was logged for average and high levels. These
results thus emphasise the importance of a well-structured L1 mental lexicon on L2
vocabulary acquisition.

In this chapter, we address the debate between single-system and dual-system models of language by looking at the processing of multi-word phrases. We present findings that challenge the distinction between ‘stored’ and ‘computed’ linguistic forms via two experiments. The first demonstrates parallels in the processing of words and phrases: frequent four-word phrases are processed more quickly than less frequent ones, without any evidence of a frequency threshold. The second experiment shows that idiomatic phrases prime their construction just as well as non-idiomatic phrases, suggesting that they are not stored as analyzed wholes, but instead have internal structure. Taken together, the findings undermine the empirical criteria traditionally used to distinguish between ‘stored’ and ‘computed’ forms: compositional phrases showed frequency effects, even though such effects are often thought to be a marker of lexical storage, while non-compositional forms (idioms) showed evidence of internal structure, unexpected if they are stored as unanalyzed wholes. The findings show that linguistic structures are processed in qualitatively the same way regardless of where they fall on the frequency and compositionality continua, and highlight the utility of models that deal with all linguistic experience in a qualitatively similar fashion, and allow for experience to influence the learning, representation and processing of all linguistic patterns.