Divergence and overlap in bilingual concept representation

Abstract

Chinese-English bilingual participants listed exemplars of 10 common categories on two occasions. Half responded in the same language in both sessions (Chinese or English) and half responded in one language in one session and the other langauge in the other session. There was substantial overlap in the exemplars listed across the sessions, but those responding in different languages showed less overlap than those responding in the same language. The results indicate differences in graded structure of the categories across the participants' languages; the exemplars associated with translation equivalent category labels in bilinguals' two langauges differ in how representative they are of the category.