Divergence and overlap in bilingual concept representations
Abstract
Chinese-English bilingual participants listed exemplars of 10 common categories on two occasions, one week apart. Half
responded in the same language in both sessions (Chinese or English) and half responded in one language in one session
and the other language 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 languages differ in how representative they
are of the category.
Description
A research study of conceptual representation in bilinguals.Subject
bilingualismconcepts
categorization
category exemplars
mental representation
mental models
Chinese-English bilinguals