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In:Multilingual Acquisition and Learning: An ecosystemic view to diversity
Edited by Elena Babatsouli
[Studies in Bilingualism 67] 2024
► pp. 452–472

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Chapter 17
Bilinguals’ lexical choice in storytelling

Testing the weaker-links hypothesis

 | University of British Columbia
Published online: 30 May 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.67.17nic
Abstract
In experimental tasks, bilinguals often have greater difficulty accessing words than monolinguals and greater difficulty in their weaker language than their stronger language, consistent with the weaker-links hypothesis (Gollan et al., 2011). The purpose of the present research is to test whether bilinguals show similar lexical access difficulties in a more ecologically valid context: storytelling. Participants watched a cartoon and told the story back. We coded their every word for corpus frequency. In Study 1, we compared bilinguals with monolinguals. In Study 2, we compared Spanish-English bilinguals with English-Spanish bilinguals. Some of the results were consistent with the weaker-links hypothesis. However, the differences were small. These results raise the possibility that bilinguals have little lexical access difficulty while telling stories.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Overview
    • 2.1Studies testing the weaker-links hypothesis
    • 2.2Cognate effects
    • 2.3Accessing words in the context of telling a story
  • 3.Study 1
    • 3.1Method
      • 3.1.1Materials
      • 3.1.2Procedure
      • 3.1.3Transcription and coding
    • 3.2Results
      • 3.2.1Cognates
    • 3.3Discussion
  • 4.Study 2
    • 4.1Method
      • 4.1.1Procedure
      • 4.1.2Transcription and coding
    • 4.2Results
    • 4.3Discussion
  • 5.General discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
  • Appendix
References (41)
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