Some things are always under construction.

Models (1)

Accessing concepts: theories of language processing

How do we process a language? It is a lexical system - on the one hand - and a means of accessing mental concepts - on the other hand. Similarly, most researchers agree that at least two levels of processing should be separated – a conceptual and a lexical level (see e.g. French & Jacquet, 2004, Francis, 1999, Paradis, 1997, for reviews). Words are defined as “verbal labels … used to refer to concepts”; word meanings are “the concepts to which words refer” (Francis, 1999, p. 194). Similarly, Paradis (2000) speaks of words as of shortcuts which activate particular conceptual features. “The sight of a cat, the sound of a cat, the smell of a cat, or a spoken or written word cat will all activate the relevant portions of the concept {cat} … Language is only one way to access concepts, i.e. non-linguistic mental representations. The conceptual network exists independently of language.” (Paradis, 2000, p. 22).
How does the same matter look like if one speaks not one but two languages? That means that at a lexical level, there would exist two distinct lexical stores (one for each language)(French & Jacquet, 2004, Francis, 1999). How about concepts? Does each language access its own conceptual correspondents or do two words of two different languages stand for the same concepts in semantic network? This has been a long debate in psycholinguistic literature. Do the two languages in one single mind of a bilingual refer to two distinct conceptual systems, i.e. is a bilingual uqual to two monolinguals in one body?

This is an interesting question and there are arguments for bith sigths. On the one hand, if e.g. you talk about your grandmother, you will refer to the same person no matter if you use German or Chinese, i.e. you will access the same conceptual representation. On the other hand, if you talk about bread, you will probably imagine a different picture if you hear this word in German or in French. "Pain" (French) would be light, long and thin, "Brot" (German) - massive and usually darker. But this issue has important implications for the current study. Because, if every language would access its own concepts, it would be a logical consequence that emotions would be also different upon encountering translation equivalents. Or, to return to the bread example, you may love "pain" and at the same time hate or be indifferent to "brot".

However, recently, most researchers have come to an agreement of two lexicons and only one conceptual store, for this notion suits best to the findings in bilingual memory research (French & Jacquet, 2004, Francis, 1999). Or, your grandmother is still your grandmother.

This conclusion may be somewhat dissatisfactory, because it doesn't make different emotionality in two languages self-evident. But, there is another point that could provide better prove for our hypotheses: If there is only one conceptual store, that doesn't nececarrily mean that the two languages access it in the same manner. Related theories and research is discussed below.

posted by gargichka @ 9:23 AM