Exploring the organisation of the L2 mental lexicon using sorting tasks
This thesis is an attempt to probe into the organisation of the L2 mental lexicon through sorting tasks, which Haastrup and Henriksen (2000) pioneered. Particularly, it addresses whether the lexicons of native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English are different from each other quantitatively and qualitatively. After a replication of Haastrup and Henriksen, five experiments each using a different set of 50 high frequency English words taken from different parts of speech were conducted on 30 participants in each group (28 for the first experiment). The studies found that LI and L2 differences were generally subtler than had been expected, such as for mean cluster number, cluster size, variability as well as the mean individual dendrogram and group dendrogram distances. However, cluster analysis showed that L2 lexical organisation was consistently different from LI lexical organisation. Thus, it is highly plausible that the L2 mental lexicon has developed lexical networks that are on the surface similar to the LI mental lexicon, when in fact the two lexicons have really developed different organisational structures from each other. Meanwhile, it was revealed that nouns can be predictors of LI
Orita, Mitsuru
Exploring the organisation of the L2 mental lexicon using sorting tasks. This thesis is an attempt to probe into the organisation of the L2 mental lexicon through sorting tasks, which Haastrup and Henriksen (2000) pioneered. Particularly, it addresses whether the lexicons of native speakers of English and non-native speakers of English are different from each other quantitatively and qualitatively. After a replication of Haastrup and Henriksen, five experiments each using a different set of 50 high frequency English words taken from different parts of speech were conducted on 30 participants in each group (28 for the first experiment). The studies found that LI and L2 differences were generally subtler than had been expected, such as for mean cluster number, cluster size, variability as well as the mean individual dendrogram and group dendrogram distances. However, cluster analysis showed that L2 lexical organisation was consistently different from LI lexical organisation. Thus, it is highly plausible that the L2 mental lexicon has developed lexical networks that are on the surface similar to the LI mental lexicon, when in fact the two lexicons have really developed different organisational structures from each other. Meanwhile, it was revealed that nouns can be predictors of LI
exploring organisation mental_lexicon use sort task attempt probe organisation mental_lexicon sort task pioneer particularly address_whether lexicon native_speaker_english non_native speaker_english different quantitatively qualitatively replication use different set high_frequency english word take different_part speech conduct participant group first study find difference generally expect mean cluster number cluster size variability well mean individual group distance however cluster_analysis show lexical organisation consistently different lexical organisation thus highly plausible mental_lexicon develop lexical network surface similar mental_lexicon fact lexicon really develop different organisational_structure other meanwhile reveal nouns predictor