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Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states and cross-linguistic transfer*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2013

KATY BORODKIN  and
MIRIAM FAUST
KATY BORODKIN*
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University
MIRIAM FAUST
Affiliation:
Bar-Ilan University
*
Address for correspondence: Katy Borodkin, Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, 52900, Israel[email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined cross-linguistic transfer in oral language skills in a sample of 50 native Hebrew speakers who learned English as a second language. The ability to retrieve phonological forms of words in naming, as manifested by the tendency to experience tip-of-the-tongue states, was correlated across languages. We also found within and across language correlations between this ability and grammatical accuracy, lexical diversity, and syntactic complexity in second language narratives. These findings are consistent with the transfer across languages in oral language skills and provide insights into the processes linking phonological and higher level encoding in production of connected speech.

Keywords

second language acquisitionoral language productioncross-linguistic transfernamingtip-of-the-tongue states
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 914 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported in part by grant number 602/06 of the Israel Science Foundation. We wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We also wish to thank the students who participated in the study.

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