SLL and LT book Vivian Cook Words Website
L2 Vocabulary
What do we know if we know the word "man"?
Form:
pronunciation: /m(ash)n/, /m(schwa)n/ in compounds
(chairman)
spelling: <man>, double
<n> before V, <manning>
Grammatical
properties:
grammatical category: usually Noun,
rarely Verb
possible and impossible structures. Verb (animate subject)
idiosyncratic grammatical
information. Plural /men/, <men>. Countable or
uncountable
Lexical properties
word
combinations; 'my good man', 'man-in the street', 'man-to-man', 'Man of
God', 'my man Jeeves'
appropriateness: 'my man' may
be used as a form of address 'Hi my
man'.
Meaning
general: 'male', 'adult',
'human being', 'concrete', 'animate'.
specific: 17
in OED from 'A human being (irrespective of sex or age)' to
'One of the pieces
used in chess'.
The ten most frequent English words
7 year old
native children: and the a I
to was it he we in
Jane Austen’s narrative: the to and of
a her I was in it
COBUILD native
speakers: the of and to a in that
I it was
Japanese learners of English: I to the you and a my in it for
L2
examples
Bahasa Melayu: saltiness (masin kitchup ‘salty like soy sauce’, masin ayer laut ‘salty like sea water’, masin garam ‘salty like
salt’, masin maung ‘horribly salty’ (O’Mohaney & Muhuideen,
1977)
Korean: paran sekj ‘blue’ (bluer to L2 users of English) (Caskey-Sirman et al
(1977)
Prototype
Theory
basic terms ("potato") are
learnt before subordinate ("Idaho potato") and superordinate terms ("vegetable")
Some examples of levels of categories in English
Superordinate |
Basic |
Subordinate |
fruit |
apple |
Cox's Orange Pippin |
|
peach |
cling peach |
tools |
hammer |
claw hammer |
|
saw |
fretsaw |
|
screwdriver |
Phillips screwdriver |
fish |
salmon |
wild salmon |
|
trout |
rainbow trout |
|
herring |
smoked herring |
reading matter |
books |
novels |
|
newspapers |
The Times |
|
letters |
business letters |
Components
theory:
the
meanings of words break up into components, which are learnt
separately
Components of the meaning of drinks
tea
+hot
–alcohol
cola
–hot –alcohol
lemonade –hot
–alcohol
China tea +hot –alcohol
+’China’
Indian tea +hot +alcohol
+’Indian’
beer
–hot
+alcohol
whisky
–hot +alcohol
Scotch whisky –hot +alcohol +’Scotch’
Irish
whiskey –hot +alcohol +’Irish’
single
malt –hot +alcohol +’Scotch’
+’single’
Campbeltown –hot +alcohol +’Scotch’ +’single’ +Lowland
Laphroaig
–hot +alcohol +’Scotch’ +’single’ +Island
Semantic fields
meaning
can be divided up into fields differently across languages
| cook | |||||||||||
| boil | fry | broil | bake | ||||||||
| simmer | (full) boil | sautée | French-fry | grill | barbecue | plank | roast | shirr | scallop | ||
| pan-fry | deep-fry | ||||||||||
Apples (Williams et al): The most frequent adjectives used by professional tasters tasting Cox's Orange Pippins (with peel) in order of frequency: |
juicy crisp chewy acidic tough astringent floury sweet green sharp stringy bitter Cox-like estery fruity sugary musty alcoholic scented core-like pear-like pineapple-like phenolic spicy fatty sulphurous banana-like | ||||||||||
Word associations:
– clang: rhyming words, blue >
shoe
– syntagmatic: continues a structure, blue > sky
–
paradigmatic: chooses word from same word type, blue >
red
Teaching uses:
— basic
level words should be taught first
— some words may be taught through
components of meaning
— it is how the word is practiced not how often, that
is important
— remember students transfer L1 meanings as well as the words
themselves
— teaching should not separate words from their structural
context
Reading
Appel, R. (1996), The lexicon in second language acquisition, in Jordens, P. & Lalleman, J. (eds) Investigating Second Language Acquisition, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, 167-186
Arnaud, P. & H. Bejoint (eds.). 1992. Vocabulary and Applied Linguistics. Basingstoke:
Cieslicka-Ratajczak, A. (1994). The mental lexicon in second language learning, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 29, 105-117.
Cohen, A 1987 The use of verbal and imagery mnemonics in second-language vocabulary learning. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 9: 43-62
Cook, V.J. (1982), 'Kategorisierung und Fremdsprachenerwerb', Gegenwartige Probleme and Aufgaben der Fremdsprachen-psychologie, Karl Marx University, Leipzig (on-line)
Cook, V.J. (1992) 'Evidence for multi-competence', Language Learning, 42, 4, 557-591
Bahrick, H.P. & Phelps, E. (1987), 'Retention of Spanish vocabulary over eight years', J. Exp. Psychol: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 13, 2, 344-349
Dollerup, C., Glahn, E., & Hansen, C.R. (1989), 'Vocabularies in the reading process', AILA Review, 6, 21-33
Gairns, R. & Redman, S. (1986). Working with words: a guide to teaching and learning vocabulary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Groot, A.M.B. de (1992), Bilingual lexical representation: a closer look at conceptual representations. In Frost, R., & Katz, L. (eds.) Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning, North Holland, Amsterdam
Grosjean, F. (1989), 'Neurolinguists, beware! The bilingual is not two monolinguals in one person', Brain and Language, 36, 3-15
Huckin, T., Haynes, M., & Coady, J. (eds.) (1993), Second Language Reading and Vocabulary, NJ: Ablex
Kellerman, E. (1986), 'An eye for an eye: constraints of the L2 lexicon', in Kellerman, E., & Sharwood-Smith, M. (eds.), Crosslinguistic Influences in Second Language Acquisition, Pergamon
Nation, P.1990. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Newbury House/Harper Row.
Nation, I.S.P. (2001), Learning vocabulary in another language, CUP
Ridley, J. & Singleton, D. (1995). Strategic L2 lexical innovation: case study of a university-level ab initio learner of German, Second Language Research 11.2, 137-148.
Rosch, E. (1977), 'Human categorisation', in N. Warren (ed.), Studies in Cross-Cultural Psychology, New York, Academic Press
Schreuder, R. & Weltens, B. (eds.) (1993), The Bilingual Lexicon, Benjamins, Amsterdam
Service, E., & Craik, F.I.M. (1993). Differences between young and older adults in learning a foreign vocabulary. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 59-74
Singleton, D. (1994). Learning L2 lexis: a matter of form? In G. Bartelt (ed.), The dynamics of language processes: essays in honor of Hans W Dechert. Tubingen: Narr.
Singleton, D. & Little, D. (1991). The second language lexicon: some evidence from university-level learners of French and German, Second Language Research 7.1, 61-82.
Models for L2 Vocabulary
From V.J. Cook Background to the L2 user, in Portraits
Mental Dictionaries; do L2 users have one or two lexicons?a) inter-relationship between two lexicons. Caramazza & Brones (1979): reaction time for a word is sensitive to the frequency of its cognate in a second language. Cristoffanini et al (1986) morphemically unrelated translations do not influence performance while morphemically related words do. 'where individual words are concerned, the gist of our argument is that representation is language-specific, but only as an artifact of morphological independence. When this contrast is relaxed as it is with cognates, language is not a critical factor, and this conclusion must hold for individual units and for the lexicon as a whole' (Kirsner, 1986). Grosjean (1990) differential processing of non-words by L2 users suggests that the other language is still residually activated when a bilingual is in a monolingual mode as does evidence that bilinguals take longer to access codeswitched words in the bilingual speech mode than base language words in the monolingual speech mode.
b) neutral store leading to two lexicons. Miljkovitch (1980): word-list learning shows bilinguals group words from two languages into categories that exist in neither language. Potter et al, 1984 concept mediation hypothesis: the two lexicons are connected via 'an underlying amodal conceptual system'. Schwanenflugel et al (1986):semantic priming is mediated by a conceptual system shared by both the bilingual's languages. Beauvillain & Grainger (1987): words are treated differently that look the same in two languages but have different meanings, for example "coin" (English: piece of money) versus "coin" (French: corner). Grainger & Beauvillain (1987) used a similar logic to compare language-specific orthography such as "vieux" (French) and "month" (English) with language non-specific orthography, such as "brain" or "sapin". Neufeld (1976, p.32) put it, 'there is ample reason to question the popular concept that an individual who knows two languages possesses a separate internalised dictionary for each language'.
c) independent L1 and L2 lexicons. Lopez & Young (1975): memory for word-lists is 'supportive of the language interdependence hypothesis'. Kirsner at al (1980): 'lexical representation in bilinguals is language specific', i.e. stored by the word not by the lexicon. Clifton et al (1978): a translated word recognition task shows that L2 users store the words themselves in a language specific form.