Book contents
- Memory, Language, and Bilingualism
- Memory, Language, and Bilingualism
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Bilingual memory:
- 2 Lexical competition in localist and distributed connectionist models of L2 acquisition
- 3 Working memory and (second) language processing
- 4 Working memory in simultaneous interpreters
- 5 Using electrophysiological measures to track the mapping of words to concepts in the bilingual brain:
- 6 Age effects in L2 learning:
- 7 Bilingualism, language, and aging
- 8 Crossovers and codeswitching in the investigation of immigrant autobiographical memory
- 9 Linguistic relativity and bilingualism
- 10 Testing effects for novel word learning in Chinese–English bilinguals
- 11 The lexicon in second language attrition:
- 12 Memory and first language forgetting
- 13 Future research directions:
- Index
11 - The lexicon in second language attrition:
What happens when the cat’s got your tongue?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
- Memory, Language, and Bilingualism
- Memory, Language, and Bilingualism
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Bilingual memory:
- 2 Lexical competition in localist and distributed connectionist models of L2 acquisition
- 3 Working memory and (second) language processing
- 4 Working memory in simultaneous interpreters
- 5 Using electrophysiological measures to track the mapping of words to concepts in the bilingual brain:
- 6 Age effects in L2 learning:
- 7 Bilingualism, language, and aging
- 8 Crossovers and codeswitching in the investigation of immigrant autobiographical memory
- 9 Linguistic relativity and bilingualism
- 10 Testing effects for novel word learning in Chinese–English bilinguals
- 11 The lexicon in second language attrition:
- 12 Memory and first language forgetting
- 13 Future research directions:
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, we expand the conceptual framework of research on second language attrition by invoking an expansive notion of the lexicon, which, in addition to vocabulary, contains items below the word level (i.e., affixes) and above the word level (i.e., phrasal structure stored in long-term memory). Although most syntactic structures are generated and then discarded, a vast number of phrases remain fixed in memory, such that procedural knowledge of grammar may be accessed through complex lexical items. In this light, all empirical research on second language attrition to date that offers evidence for ordering effects can be shown to involve issues of access to the mental lexicon. We examine how computational and psycholinguistic models of lexical activation and inhibition might be used to explain both catastrophic loss in cases of disuse, and apparently miraculous recovery in situations of re-immersion, as lexical retrieval breathes life into syntax.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Memory, Language, and BilingualismTheoretical and Applied Approaches, pp. 291 - 318Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012