Vocabulary is an essential part of language acquisition. However, heritage speakers and L2 learners learn vocabulary and languages in different environments. A heritage speaker is someone who grows up in a household where a minority language is spoken, and switches to the majority language. Because of this, a heritage speaker learns by hearing words and mapping that word directly onto a concept. L2 learners, however, learn that language in the classroom where they hear the words and learn to read and write them. This raises the question: if bilinguals learn languages in different environments, what is the nature of the lexical and semantic connections in the mind? This dissertation investigated the lexical and semantic connections in the mind of heritage speakers and L2 learners to see what connections were the strongest, within the framework of the Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) (Kroll & Stewart, 1994). Heritage speakers and L2 learners were tested aurally and visually with semantically related and form related distracters in a translation recognition task in both directions. The groups were matched on proficiency and language dominance. The results showed that all participants were slower but more accurate in the aural condition and that the semantically related distracters caused more interference in terms of reaction times, but were less accurate. Heritage speakers, however, had a larger magnitude of interference with the related semantic distracters than the L2 participants. Heritage speakers map one word onto one concept when learning in their first language. When that word becomes active, semantically related words in the network also become activated through spreading activation. Because the heritage speakers had a larger magnitude of interference than L2 learners, it can be assumed that heritage speakers have stronger spreading activation, possibly due to the manner the lexical items were acquired. This dissertation also provides implications for the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) and for teaching. These are discussed in the discussion chapter. Keywords: heritage speaker, bilingual, lexical, semantic / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / 2019 / November 7, 2019. / bilingual, heritage speaker, lexical, semantic / Includes bibliographical references. / Gretchen Sunderman, Professor Directing Dissertation; Michael Kaschak, University Representative; Antje Muntendam, Committee Member; Michael Leeser, Committee Member; Carolina González, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_752351 |
| Contributors | Gibson, Kristin (author), Sunderman, Gretchen L. (professor directing dissertation), Kaschak, Michael P. (university representative), Muntendam, Antje (committee member), Leeser, Michael J. (committee member), González, Carolina (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Arts and Sciences (degree granting college), Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (degree granting departmentdgg) |
| Publisher | Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text, doctoral thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (107 pages), computer, application/pdf |
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