Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T02:42:37.297Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kitchen Russian: Cross-linguistic differences and first-language object naming by Russian–English bilinguals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2010

ANETA PAVLENKO  and
BARBARA C. MALT
ANETA PAVLENKO*
Affiliation:
Temple University
BARBARA C. MALT
Affiliation:
Lehigh University
*
Address for correspondence: Dr. Aneta Pavlenko, CITE Department, College of Education, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122, USAapavlenk@temple.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We examined first language (L1) naming of common household objects in three groups of Russian–English bilinguals: early, childhood and late bilinguals. Their naming patterns were compared with those of native speakers of Russian and English, in order to detect possible second language (L2) English influence on L1 Russian naming patterns. We investigated whether such influence is modulated by the speaker's linguistic trajectory, specifically, their age of arrival in the L2 environment, which in turn influences their relative proficiency and dominance in the two languages. We also examined whether the potential for L2 shifts can be linked to specific characteristics of the categories in the L1 or L2. L2 influence was evident in the data, increasing with earlier age of arrival but most pronounced with lowest L1 proficiency. The changes entailed both narrowing and broadening of linguistic categories. These findings indicate that L1 word use is susceptible to L2 influence even for concrete nouns referring to familiar objects, and the nature of the shift for a given word appears to be driven by several factors.

Keywords

cross-linguistic influenceL2 influence on L1L1 attritionobject namingRussian
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 14 , Issue 1: Crosslinguistic influence in bilinguals' concepts and conceptualizations , January 2011 , pp. 19 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We thank Arlo Bensinger for his invaluable help in creating the website used in the study; Viktoria Driagina and Nina Vyatkina for help in selecting and photographing the objects; Viktoria Driagina, Valery Solovyov and Maria Volynsky for assistance with data collection; and Eef Ameel for advice and assistance with data analysis.

References

Ameel, E., Malt, B. C., & Storms, G. (2008). Object naming and later lexical development: From baby bottle to beer bottle. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 262–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ameel, E., Storms, G., Malt, B., & Sloman, S. (2005). How bilinguals solve the naming problem. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, 309–329.Google Scholar
Andersen, E. (1975). Cups and glasses: learning that boundaries are vague. Journal of Child Language, 2, 79–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language, pp. 65–110. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cook, V. (ed.) (2003). Effects of the second language on the first. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Groot, A. M. B. (1992). Bilingual lexical representation: A closer look at conceptual representations. In Frost, R. & Katz, L. (eds.), Orthography, phonology, morphology, and meaning, pp. 389–412. Amsterdam: Elsevier.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Groot, A. M. B. (1993). Word-type effects in bilingual processing tasks: Support for a mixed-representational system. In Schreuder, R. & Weltens, B. (eds.), The bilingual lexicon, pp. 27–51. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Groot, A. M. B. (2002). Lexical representation and lexical processing in the L2 user. In Cook, V. (Ed.), Portraits of the L2 user, pp. 32–63. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Dufour, R., & Kroll, J. (1995). Matching words to concepts in two languages: A test of the concept mediation model of bilingual representation. Memory and Cognition, 23, 166–180.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frumkina, R., Miheev, A., Mostovaia, A., & Riumina, N. (1991). Semantika i kategorizatsia [Semantics and categorization]. Moscow: Nauka.Google Scholar
Goddard, C. (1998). Semantic analysis: A practical introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R. I., Fennema-Notestine, C., & Morris, S. K. (2005). Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification. Memory & Cognition, 33, 1220–1234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, R. & Belnap, K. (1986). The acquisition of lexical boundaries in English by native speakers of Spanish. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 24, 275–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grosjean, F. (2008). Studying bilinguals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jiang, N. (2000). Lexical representation and development in a second language. Applied Linguistics, 21, 47–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kempton, W. (1978). Grading and taxonomic relations: A mug is a sort of a cup. American Ethnologist, 5, 44–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J., Michael, E., Tokowicz, N., & Dufour, R. (2002). The development of lexical fluency in a second language. Second Language Research, 18, 141–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenfeld, D. (1996). Plastic glasses and church fathers. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kronenfeld, D., Armstrong, J., & Wilmoth, S. (1985). Exploring the internal structure of linguistic categories: An extensionist semantic view. In Dougherty, J. (ed.), Directions in cognitive anthropology, pp. 99–110. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1973). The boundaries of words and their meanings. In Bailey, Ch. & Shuy, R. (eds.), New ways of analyzing variation in English, pp. 340–373. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Malt, B. C., & Sloman, S. (2003). Linguistic diversity and object naming by non-native speakers of English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 6, 47–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malt, B. C., Sloman, S., & Gennari, S. (2003). Universality and language specificity in object naming. Journal of Memory and Language, 49, 20–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malt, B. C., Sloman, S., Gennari, S., Shi, M., & Wang, Y. (1999). Knowing versus naming: Similarity and the linguistic categorization of artifacts. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 230–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mervis, C. B. (1987). Child-basic object categories and early lexical development. In Neisser, U. (ed.), Concepts and conceptual development: Ecological and intellectual factors in categorisation, pp. 201–233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1974). Concept, word, and sentence: Interrelations in acquisition and development. Psychological Review, 81, 267–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2000). L2 influence on L1 in late bilingualism. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 11 (2), 175–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2002). Bilingualism and emotions. Multilingua, 21 (1), 45–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2004). Second language influence and first language attrition in adult bilingualism. In Schmid, M., Köpke, B., Kejser, M. & Weilemar, L. (eds.), First language attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues, pp. 47–59. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2009). Conceptual representation in the bilingual lexicon and second language vocabulary learning. In Pavlenko, A. (ed.), The bilingual mental lexicon: Interdisciplinary approaches, pp. 125–160. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pavlenko, A. (2010). Verbs of motion in L1 Russian of Russian–English bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13 (1), 49–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wierzbicka, A. (1984). Cups and mugs: Lexicography and conceptual analysis. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 4, 205–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar