Unbalanced Bilinguals’ Asymmetric Associations Between L2 Words for Taxonomic Categories of Basic and Superordinate Levels

The revised hierarchical model seems different from the distributed conceptual feature model in predicting how unbalanced bilinguals would be aware of semantic relations between words for taxonomic categories of basic level (exemplar words) and words for those of superordinate level (category names) in L2. We did a series of four experiments to compare unbalanced bilinguals’ awareness of conceptual relations between exemplar words and between exemplar words and category names in their first (L1) and second language (L2). A priming task of semantic categorization was adopted, and the participants were 72 college students, who began to learn L2 in classroom settings at a late age and achieved an L2 proficiency between intermediate and advanced levels. The reaction times indicated that the participants could automatically process not only the exemplar-word but also the category-name primes in L2. Activations of semantic representations for the category names in L2 seemed to spread to those for the exemplar words in L1 and L2, but activations of semantic presentations for the exemplar words in L2 spread only to those for the example words in L1 for the participants. It was concluded that unbalanced bilinguals appear to have developed asymmetric associations between category names and exemplar words in L2. The implication is that L2 learners should learn L2 words mainly by means of using the language and not taking rote memory of isolated words.