title: Lexical selection and factors influencing speech production: evidence from Kannada-English bilinguals
Creators: name: Bangalore, Shrilekha
Publisher: name: University of Reading
Year: 2025

description: Bilingual lexical access models assume that semantic representations activate the lexical 
nodes simultaneously in both languages. The question is whether the activated lexical 
nodes from both languages compete for selection or not. Three hypotheses have been 
proposed to test the competitive lexical selection mechanism: language-specific lexical 
selection – which argues that competition is restricted to within language lexical nodes. 
Language non-specific lexical selection- supportive of cross-language competition and the 
dynamic view- is a combination of language-specific and language-non-specific views. 
This dynamic view is based on the language context hypothesis (Grosjean, 2001), which 
states that bilinguals can represent themselves anywhere on the continuum, depending on 
the activation level of non-target language. Bilingual in a monolingual context may lead to 
language-specific selection due to activation of the target language to greater levels, and 
when in a bilingual context, it can lead to language non-specific due to activation of both 
the languages and non-target language activation exceeding that of a monolingual context. 
Previous studies on bilingual lexical selection have shown lexical selection to be language�non-specific in bilinguals and language-specific at times. However, most of the studies 
have been conducted in highly proficient bilinguals speaking closely related languages, 
which has resulted in cross-language interference effects. These observed effects may be 
due to high proficiency and proximity between the languages. On the other hand, studies 
which investigated bilingual lexical selection in distant language bilinguals have yielded 
inconsistent and inconclusive results. In addition, they have been investigated in highly 
proficient bilinguals, and only a handful of studies have been carried out on different L2 
proficiency levels. Moreover, previous studies have mainly studied lexical selection in one 
language direction, i.e., naming in L2 with L1 or L2 distractors. The present thesis 
investigates bilingual lexical selection in moderately proficient distant language Kannada�English bilinguals in both language directions. In addition, multiple factors have been 
shown to influence lexical selection in bilinguals. Specifically, proficiency, language 
dominance, language use and inhibitory control factors have been shown to modulate 
bilingual lexical selection. It is assumed that one way to resolve the competition from the 
activated lexical nodes in both languages is through interference suppression using 
inhibitory control mechanisms. The second aim of this study was to investigate the 
relationship between bilingual (proficiency and dominance) and inhibitory control factors 
and their influence on the lexical selection process. A Kannada picture and word stimuli 
set was developed in the first study; in the second study, four picture-word interference 
paradigms were developed with manipulations of distractor type, distractor language and 
language context to investigate the three lexical selection hypotheses, which included 
naming the pictures in Kannada with Kannada and English distractors and naming in 
English with English and Kannada distractors. A within-participant design was used with 
moderately proficient sequential bilinguals to investigate lexical selection in both language 
directions within the same bilinguals. The results showed an absence of distractor effects 
and the presence of distractor language and language context effects. Interaction between 
the distractor language and language context with bilingual factors and inhibitory control 
factors on the speed of lexical retrieval were observed. The results from the current thesis 
suggest that lexical retrieval is dynamic in that distractor language and language context 
effects are observed, which interact with bilingual and inhibitory factors.