Semantic processing in language production includes different meaning relations determining the selection of lexical representations that best express the intended message. Here, we discuss ...assumptions of the swinging lexical network proposal (SLN), proposed to account for effects of different semantic relations in a variety of experimental paradigms, with effects ranging from semantic facilitation to interference. The SLN is based on two assumptions. First, conceptual and lexical processing proceed in parallel and may exhibit opposite effects of conceptual priming and lexical competition. Second, the amount of lexical competition is determined by the co-activation of an inter-related lexical cohort and is thus sensitive to the number and strength of active competitors. We discuss behavioural effects across different experimental paradigms and semantic relations in light of the SLN and suggest that by adopting the basic assumptions we can account for a wide range of semantic facilitation and interference effects in language production.
In studies of bilingual word recognition with masked priming, first language (L1) primes activate their second language (L2) translation equivalents in lexical decision tasks, but effects in the ...opposite direction are weaker (Wen & van Heuven, 2017). This study seeks to clarify the relative weight of stimulus-level (frequency) and individual-level (L2 proficiency, L2 exposure/use) factors in the emergence of asymmetrical priming effects. We offer the first data set where L2 proficiency and L1/L2 exposure/use are simultaneously investigated as continuous variables, along with word frequency. While we replicate the asymmetry in priming effects, our data provide useful insights into the factors driving L2–L1 priming. These fall almost exclusively under the category of stimulus-level factors, with L2 exposure/use being the only experiential variable to show considerable influence, although complex interactions involving L2 proficiency and word frequency are also present. We discuss the implications of these results for models of bilingual lexical processing and for the appropriate measurement of experiential factors in this type of research.
•This paper studies the relationship between the linguistic complexity and the scientific impact of publications.•High-impact articles usually demonstrate a moderate linguistic complexity, while ...low-impact ones exhibit random linguistic patterns.•Point estimation and confidence intervals suggest that these trends are not practical significant.
The number of publications and the number of citations received have become the most common indicators of scholarly success. In this context, scientific writing increasingly plays an important role in scholars’ scientific careers. To understand the relationship between scientific writing and scientific impact, this paper selected 12 variables of linguistic complexity as a proxy for depicting scientific writing. We then analyzed these features from 36,400 full-text Biology articles and 1,797 full-text Psychology articles. These features were compared to the scientific impact of articles, grouped into high, medium, and low categories. The results suggested no practical significant relationship between linguistic complexity and citation strata in either discipline. This suggests that textual complexity plays little role in scientific impact in our data sets.
While known to influence visual lexical processing, the semantic information we associate with words has recently been found to influence auditory lexical processing as well. The present work ...explored the influence of semantic richness in auditory lexical decision. Study 1 recreated an experiment investigating semantic richness effects in concrete nouns (Goh et al., 2016). In Study 2, we expanded the stimulus set from 442 to 8,626 items, exploring the robustness of effects observed in Study 1 against a larger data set with increased diversity in both word class and other characteristics of interest. We also utilized generalized additive mixed models to investigate potential nonlinear effects. Results indicate that semantic richness effects become more nuanced and detectable when a wider set of items belonging to different parts of speech is examined. Findings are discussed in the context of models of spoken word recognition.
This comprehensive account of performance-based assessment of second language (L2) lexical proficiency analyses and compares two of the primary methods of evaluation used in the field and unpacks the ...ways in which they tap into different dimensions of one model of lexical competence and proficiency. It also juxtaposed performance-based assessment with discrete-point tests of vocabulary.
This book builds on the latest research on performance-based assessment to systematically explore the qualitative method of using human raters and the quantitative method of using statistical measures of lexis and phraseology. Supported by an up-to-date review of the existing literature, both approaches' unique features are highlighted but also compared to one another to provide a holistic overview of performance-based assessment as it stands today at both the theoretical and empirical level. These findings are exemplified in a concluding chapter, which summarises results from an empirical study looking at a range of lexical and phraseological measures and human raters' scores of over 150 essays written by both L2 learners of English and native speakers as well as their vocabulary tests results. Taken together, the volume challenges existing tendencies within the field, which attempt to use one method to validate the other, by demonstrating their propensity to capture very different aspects of lexical proficiency, thereby offering a means by which to better conceptualise performance-based assessment of L2 vocabulary in the future.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers working in second language acquisition and applied linguistics research, particularly those interested in issues around assessment, vocabulary acquisition, and language proficiency.
Since vocabulary is one of the most important components of reading comprehension, the relationship between the two has been studied in great detail. The significance of this relationship lies in the ...fact that learners' vocabulary size and the degree of coverage of the word families of the intended content are closely correlated with their ability to understand the context and the text. This study examined the lexical coverage of a corpus of 6,802,300 words from the first-year course books of the National Open University of Nigeria. With Anthony's AntWordProfiler software, we analyzed the lexical coverage of the corpus using the Lexical Frequency Profiling approach. The current study used Nation's (2012) BNC/COCA to determine the necessary vocabulary size for course book comprehension. The corpus study revealed that in order to reach 95% and 98% of the entire course book corpus, respectively, 5000 and 11000 word-families were required. However, vocabulary size needed for comprehension of each disciplinary field varied greatly, with the hard sciences having a significantly higher lexical demand as compared to the other fields. This means that students need a larger vocabulary to interact with and understand the course books, especially in the hard sciences. It therefore recommended that materials writers and instructors consider the specific disciplinary vocabulary needs in course books. Similarly, due to disciplinary differences, more specific instructions and glossaries are needed for first-year university students to have a better understanding of course books, especially hard science course books. The study demonstrated the significance of corpus-based approaches in the analysis of language learning materials. Overall, the study underlined the importance of sufficient vocabulary for reading comprehension.
Across languages, age of acquisition (AoA) is a critical psycholinguistic factor in lexical processing, reflecting the influence of learning experience. Early-acquired words tend to be processed more ...quickly and accurately than late-acquired words. Recently, an integrated view proposed that both the mappings between representations and the construction of semantic representations contribute to AoA effects, thus, predicting larger AoA effects for words with arbitrary mappings between representations as well as for tasks requiring greater semantic processing. We investigated how these predictions generalize to the Chinese language system that differs from alphabetic languages regarding the ease of mappings and semantic involvement in lexical processing. A cross-task investigation of differential psycholinguistic effects was conducted with large character naming and lexical decision datasets to establish the extent to which semantics is involved in the two tasks. We focused on examining the effect sizes of lexical-semantic variables and AoA, and the interaction between AoA and consistency. The results demonstrated that semantics influenced Chinese character naming more than lexical decision, which is in contrast with the findings related to English language, though, critically, AoA effects were more pronounced for character naming than for lexical decision. Additionally, an interaction between AoA and consistency was found in character naming. Our findings provide cross-linguistic evidence supporting the view of multiple origins of AoA effects in the language-processing system.
This study adopted a corpus-based, contrastive approach to lexical complexity in the academic writing of first language (L1) and second language (L2) postgraduates. Lexical complexity scores were ...extracted using the Lexical Complexity Analyzer from the Corpus of Arab Proficient Users of English (CAPUE), consisting of Saudi academics’ dissertations in applied linguistics. To investigate the potential differences between this corpus and native speakers’ corpus, the lexical complexity of writing material from the CAPUE and Corpus of English Native Speakers (CENS) were compared. The computational system employed 25 lexical complexity measures to investigate differences in the two groups’ lexical density, sophistication, and variation. The results revealed similar lexical density in the writing of both groups; however, the texts by L1 researchers were more lexically complex for most measures of sophistication and variation. The results have implications for teaching English for academic purposes and highlights areas with inappropriate lexical choices. These findings call for the design of pedagogical interventions to enhance the lexical complexity development of L2 postgraduates.
Simultaneous interpreting (SI) is a cognitively demanding task that imposes a heavy cognitive load on interpreters. Interpreting into one’s native (A language) or non-native language (B language), ...known as interpreting directionality, involves different cognitive demands. The cognitive requirements of simultaneous interpreting as well as interpreting directionality affect the interpreting process and product. This current study focused on the lexical features of a specially designed corpus of United Nations Security Council speeches. The corpus included non-interpreted speeches in US English (SubCorpusE), and texts interpreted from Chinese into English (A-into-B interpreted texts, SubCorpusC-E) and from Russian into English (B-into-A interpreted texts, SubCorpusR-E). Ten measures were used to analyze the lexical features of each subcorpus in terms of lexical density, lexical diversity, and lexical sophistication. The three subcorpora were regrouped into two pairs for the two research questions: SubCorpusR-E versus SubCorpusE and SubCorpusR-E versus SubCorpusC-E. The results showed that the interpreted texts in SubCorpusR-E exhibited simpler vocabulary features than the non-interpreted texts in SubCorpusE. In addition, compared with the A-into-B interpreted texts, the B-into-A interpreted texts demonstrated simplified lexical characteristics. The lexical features of the interpreted texts reflect that experienced simultaneous interpreters consciously adopt a simplified vocabulary approach to manage the cognitive load during simultaneous interpreting. This study provides new insights into the cognitive aspects of simultaneous interpreting, the impact of directionality, and the role of lexical strategies. These findings have practical implications for interpreter training, professional growth, and maintaining interpreting quality in diverse settings.
•Examined titles, abstracts, conclusions of research papers by highly ranked authors.•Analyzed readability, lexical density, lexical diversity, and coherence.•Highly-cited articles tend to be more ...complex to read.•Minimal difference in lexical frequency and coherence between high, low citation papers.•Abstract readability, Total references exhibit a positive association with citation values.
The Scholar's success is indicated by the number of citations it received for its publication. Examining the correlation between the linguistic attributes of scholarly publications and their scientific influence holds significant importance. This study analyzed 1000 research papers by highly ranked authors from computer science and electronics backgrounds. The title, abstract, and conclusion sections of the paper were analyzed. This study utilizes readability, lexical diversity, lexical density, syntactic features, and coherence measures to establish the correlation between citations and the textual content of an article. The characteristics of the publication were evaluated in relation to its research impact, which was classified into two categories, high citations and low citations. Additionally, the influence of various aspects on citations was assessed through the utilisation of the negative binomial regression model, ordinary least square model, and spearman correlation. This analysis took into account the characteristics of length and structure. The results highlight a clear positive link between abstract readability, and number of references with increased citations. Additionally, each additional page contributes to a 0.2 % increase in citation count. However, the number of diagrams and conclusion readability show no significant connection with citations. Factors like title length, abstract length, and conclusion length also exhibit associations, though with slightly lower percentages. The results indicate that linguistic characteristics exert a limited impact on the acquisition of citations.
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