Bilinguals' Existing Languages Benefit Vocabulary Learning in a Third Language

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Second Language Acquisition

Background:

• Vocabulary acquisition is key to learning a new language.
• Cognates and native-language overlap can accelerate learning.
• The role of bilinguals' two languages in third language acquisition is debated.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how bilinguals' two existing languages interact during third language acquisition.
• To compare the scaffolding and accumulation models of bilingual language learning.
• To determine the impact of wordlikeness in each native language on novel word learning.

Main Methods:

• Twenty English-German bilingual adults learned an artificial language.
• Novel words varied in English and German wordlikeness (neighborhood size, orthotactic probability).
• Word production accuracy and memory for novel words were assessed.

Main Results:

• Wordlikeness in either English or German improved word production accuracy.
• Similarity to one native language offered the same benefit as dual-language overlap.
• Novel word memory was influenced by the statistical properties of the artificial language.

Conclusions:

• Bilinguals utilize both native languages during third language acquisition.
• Findings support a scaffolding model of bilingual learning.
• The statistical structure of the novel language also impacts memory.