Psychology 2134A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Lexicon, Lexical Decision Task, French Verbs

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2134A/B
• Professor: Marc Joanisse

Document Summary

Monolingual: able to speak only one language. Bilingual: able to speak two or more languages, most people in the world are bilingual. Balanced bilingual: a person who grows up speaking two languages and can communicate equally well in either one, most bilinguals are not balanced but have a preferred or dominant language. Unbalanced bilingual: a person who has limited ability in a second language. Ability is less proficient than in primary language. We naively view languages as discrete entities within national borders: french in france, italian in italy, spanish in spain, german in germany. Related languages can exist along a continuum: dutch-german continuum from amsterdam to berlin. Distinction between language and dialect is more political than linguistic: hindi and urdu are mutually intelligible but spoken in india vs. Similar continuum of chinese dialects from beijing to shanghai: but not mutually intelligible. In fact at least 12 mutually unintelligible languages. But at least partially social or attitude-based.