Studying associations in multilinguals: a cross-linguistic study

Šlopar, Magdalena. (2019). Studying associations in multilinguals: a cross-linguistic study. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of English Language and Literature
Department of East Slavic Languages and Literature > Chair of Russian Literature. [mentor Letica Krevelj, Stela and Barčot, Branka].

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Abstract

In the literature on mental lexicon, associations are used as a way to inspect that elusive human mechanism. Researchers have until recently mostly opted for studies based on monolingual participants, but language and, therefore, cultural communities are nowadays perceived as “melting pots” and they are mostly multilingual due to different cultural backgrounds of their members. This thesis aims to explore associations and mental lexicon organisation of multilingual speakers of Croatian, English and Russian. Association questionnaires have been used to collect data which has further been statistically analysed and explained in terms of associative fields and conceptualisation overlaps caused by typological closeness of languages at large and their status in users’ repertoires. Based on a review of the literature on linguistic culturology, the Slavic etymology and tradition that Croatian and Russian languages share shapes the way in which speakers form their linguistic picture of the world. Analysis of the responses has shown that the conceptual categories in participants’ languages are often mediated by the L1 concept and that many variables, such as e.g. participants’ language proficiency and word-related variables have an effect on the answers in the three languages. Due to a small sample of participants the results obtained are only tentative and further research is needed.

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