Lexical access and prototypicality in the English of Maltese bilingual speakers

Abstract

This study investigates aspects of the processes underlying the lexical access of prototypes in Maltese speakers of English. Data was collected from three groups of Maltese English speakers of different degrees of English language proficiency (English-dominant, Maltese-dominant, and balanced bilinguals), in an experiment involving a picture-naming task. Each image stimulus was chosen on the basis of the position of the corresponding lexeme in the prototype structure of the respective lexical field. A prime in the form of the printed superordinate term preceded each image. The subjects were asked to respond by naming the pictures presented, and reaction times were measured. The results derived from the task allow a number of preliminary conclusions to be drawn. In the English-dominant and balanced bilingual group results, there is a clear differentiation in the response times to prototypes, non-prototypes, and words that were not related to their supposed prime. No such differentiation is present in the Maltese-dominant group results. This suggests that the storage and processing of words in L2 is not based on prototype hierarchies. In addition, it is striking that the balanced bilinguals have both the overall fastest response times and the lowest error rates, and therefore seem to be at an advantage over the English-dominant and Maltese-dominant bilinguals, at least in the sphere of lexical access.