The Mental Lexicon 13.6

The mental lexicon

Before we dive into the mental lexicon … Let‘s have a look at Onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia – what is that??? literary device that relies on words that imitate sound effect words or noise words Writers choose these words as a way of conveying the sound of the things that they are describing It helps them to emphasize something that they're describing Examples: boom, meow, crash, sizzle, crunch and buzz.

Read the following words… Cook Sea White Baby What do you associate with these words? What comes right to your mind? Draw a word mind/mind map

Listen to the following sounds… What word would you use to describe this sound … Make a list of possible sound descriptions

Sound descriptions What is the Spanish sound description for the crow of a rooster? What is represented by the following sounds? Ouch Wheeze Fizz Slosh

Sound descriptions What do you think is the English sound description for (be creative?): Train tires The train‘s whistle

Sound descriptions Which animal is characterized by the following sounds? Bzz Cheep/chirp/peep Meow Cluck cliuck Cock-a- doodle-doo Snap eeyore

But how are words and sounds stored in our mental lexicon?

The words in our mind are linked together like a gigantic mulit-dimensional spiderweb Each item is connected to another item word association experiments (the one we did at the beginning) can show the organization of the mental lexicon

The mental lexicon

L1 and L2 lexicons within the same speaker are clearly linked, phonologically, semantically, and associationally.

How is the lexical network organized? There are two types of links which seem to be particularly strong among native speakers of English: Connections between co-ordinates (e.g. salt -- pepper, butterfly -- moth) and collocational links (e.g. salt -water, blonde- hair, traffic – jam). Two further links (although these occur less often) are: superordination (e.g. butterfly -insect) and synonymy (e.g. starved - hungry).

The mental lexicon L1 and L2 Sokmen (1993, quoted in Umamoto) analyzed word associations of non-native speakers States that affective associations are more often observed than coordinates and collocations According to Sokmen, there is an 'affective' category that shows a visual image, an opinion, an emotional response, or a personal past experience: such as table - study or dark – scared This suggests that students develop word associations based on feelings, attitudes, or strong memories and impressions

Some of the examples might be classified into 'nonsense’ Association - personal experience memories

This suggests that there lies a big difference in word association among individuals

Mental lexicon varies from person to person, but also it is always changing. McCarthy (1990: 42) demonstrates this as follows: The mental lexicon is never static; it is constantly receiving new input which has to be integrated into the existing store. Not only do new words come in but information about existing words is added too. This is a more obvious phenomenon for the learner and the L2 lexicon, but it is also true of L1. The webs of meanings and associations constantly shift and re-adjust; new connectins are woven, and old ones strengthened

Cultural differences in Association: L1 vs L2 • Hearer converts signs into a concept, concepts have to be similar so that communication is successful Age of acquisition decides if social behaviour and perception is shaped automatically/naturally Age decides if L1 and L2 has the same neural network or if they are rooted in different networks

Cultural differences in Association: L1 vs L2 Sociocultural perspective very important for language learning , e.g. politeness Linguistic relativity: Spanish preposition in vs English prepositions Association of a German person might be completely different than that of a Spanish person Der Schlüssel vs la llave

Colour associations I feel blue = I feel depressed Japanese – the colour of water (light blue) Colour of a mouse (grey) There are a lot of colour idioms in the English language

Reference McCarthy, M.(1990). Vocabulary. Oxford: OUP Umamoto,T. Hypertext and the Mental Lexicon: Using the Homepage for Learning Vocabulary” (22 March 2009) Sokmen, A.(1993) "Word Association Results." JALT Journal 15.2: 135-50.

Learning how to Learn

What are things that you know about a lexical item?

Discuss in groups of 4

What are things that you know about a lexical item? Spelling Number of syllabus Phonemes (sounds that make up the word) Which syllables are stressed Which stresses are stronger or weaker Parts of speech Grammatically realted forms The basic meaning (table= furniture with a flat surface and legs)

What are things that you know about a lexical item? Other meanings Metaphorical meaning Negative/positive connotations (junkie vs drug adict) Appropriacy in social context Restrictions on meaning Immediate collocates (blonde hair) Common chunks, phrases, idioms it appears (I‘d rather not say, ride a motorcycle) translation

What are things that you know about a lexical item? False friendes, true friends (cognates, similar to L1) Lexical families (words realtedby their topic) Synonyms/antonyms Homonyms (same spelling, different meaning: bank) Homophones (no vs know) Prefixes, suffixes (missunderstanding) Visual image Associations, feelings Mnemonics (thigs that help you remember the word)

Vocabulary Acquisition But how can we memorize all this? How can we trick our mind? Help our mind?

Vocabulary acquisition Scientist found out that a word has to be repeated between 5-20 times, if possible in different semantic and syntactic categories –repetition!!!

story techniques, world map grouping: parts of body,/kitchen etc. hand out picture of body. Ss write the word on the item as they learn it word page: There was a terrible The traffic What’s holding up the

jam round the ring road is really heavy today ?

References Scrivener, Jim (2005). Learning Teaching. Oxford: Macmillan.