Linguistic diversity and the bilingual lexicon: The Belgian Story

Linguistic diversity and the bilingual lexicon: The Belgian Story Eef Ameel (eef.ameel@psy.kuleuven.ac.be) Department of Psychology, K.U. Leuven, Tiensestraat 102 B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Gert Storms (gert.storms@psy.kuleuven.ac.be) Department of Psychology, K.U. Leuven, Tiensestraat 102 B-3000 Leuven, Belgium Barbara Malt (bcm0@lehigh.edu) Department of Psychology, Lehigh University, 17 Memorial Drive East Bethlehem, PA 18015 USA Steven Sloman (Steven_Sloman@brown.edu) Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Box 1978 Providence, RI 02912 USA languages find substantial differences in naming objects, but only small differences in perceived similarity among the objects. For example, Kronenfeld, Armstrong and Wilmoth (1985) looked at the names given to various drinking vessels and the similarity among them judged by American, Japanese and Israeli participants. They found a dissociation between naming and similarity. However, the sample of objects used by Kronenfeld et al. (1985) was small and they did not attempt to assess whether the observed differences in naming paralleled the differences in perceived similarity. Malt et al. (1999) carried out a larger-scale evaluation of the relation of perceived similarity among objects to the names they are given. They presented data from speakers of three different language groups: American, Chinese and Argentinean participants, speaking respectively English, Chinese and Spanish. The participants performed two tasks: they named 60 common containers (all mostly called ‘bottle’ or ‘jar’ in English) and they provided similarity ratings, by sorting the objects into piles based on three types of similarity: physical, functional or overall similarity. Speakers of the three languages showed substantially different patterns of naming for the set of containers, but they saw the similarities among the objects in much the same way. Malt et al. claim that the linguistic differences arise from differences in language-specific conventions and differences in language history. The imperfect relation between naming patterns of a language and non-linguistic knowledge of objects and between the naming patterns of two different languages raises questions about how bilingually-raised individuals build and maintain their two lexicons. Do they maintain two distinct and native-like naming patterns, each with its own language-specific conventions or do the two competing Abstract Analogous to Malt, Sloman, Gennari, Shi and Wang (1999) we examined the relation between linguistic categorization and similarity of artifacts by Dutch-speaking and French- speaking monolingual Belgians. We replicated the dissociation between naming and sorting found by Malt et al. (1999) for speakers of English, Chinese and Spanish. We also investigated the relation between the two naming patterns of bilingual Belgians, raised simultaneously in French and in Dutch, and how these naming patterns can be linked to the naming of the monolinguals. The results showed that the French and Dutch naming pattern of the bilinguals didn’t parallel the respective naming patterns of the monolinguals, but rather merged into a common naming pattern. Introduction Research from several different traditions concerns the coupling of similarity and naming. However, different studies have resulted in contradicting conclusions. Some studies found that categorization judgments paralleled similarity judgments, for example the study of Smith and Sloman (1994). Other studies have shown a clear dissociation between similarity judgments and preferred category labels for novel objects. Keil (1989) and Rips (1989) presented participants with artifacts described as physically resembling one type of object, but having been made to be used as another type, or with animals looking like one type of animal but said to have internal parts of a different species. They both found that although objects were rated as more similar to the former, they tended to be categorized as the latter (see also Rips & Collins, 1993). Also studies that look at well-established lexical categories and make comparisons across speakers of different