Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T04:59:22.871Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Examining English–German translation ambiguity using primed translation recognition*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

CHELSEA M. EDDINGTON  and
NATASHA TOKOWICZ
CHELSEA M. EDDINGTON
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
NATASHA TOKOWICZ*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
*
Address for correspondence: Natasha Tokowicz, Learning Research & Development Center, 3939 O'Hara St., Room 634, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many words have more than one translation across languages. Such translation-ambiguous words are translated more slowly and less accurately than their unambiguous counterparts. We examine the extent to which word context and translation dominance influence the processing of translation-ambiguous words. We further examine how these factors influence translation ambiguity stemming from two sources, specifically translation ambiguity derived from semantic ambiguity and from near-synonymy. Bilingual participants were presented with English–German word pairs that were preceded by a related or unrelated prime and were asked to decide if the word pairs were translations. Translation-unambiguous pairs were recognized more quickly and accurately than translation-ambiguous pairs. Related pairs and dominant translations were responded to more quickly than unrelated pairs and subordinate translations, respectively. We discuss the results in relation to models of bilingual memory and propose a new model that makes specific predictions about translation ambiguity, the Revised Hierarchical Model of Translation Ambiguity.

Keywords

translation ambiguityprimed translation recognitiontranslation dominancesemantic similarity
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 2: Computational Modeling of Bilingualism , April 2013 , pp. 442 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We thank the members of the PLUM Lab, and especially Kaitlin Mainwaring and Kelly Griffin for research assistance, and Charles A. Perfetti and Tessa Warren for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. This manuscript was also improved by the comments of Mark Brysbaert and two anonymous reviewers. We also thank Carrie Jackson for her valuable assistance with this study. NT was supported by PSI2009–12616 “Procesamiento Léxico y Sintáctico en la Adquisición de Segundas Lenguas” awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science during the writing of this manuscript.

References

Anderson, J. R. (1974). Retrieval of propositional information from long-term memory. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 451–474.Google Scholar
Armstrong, B. C., & Plaut, D. C. (2008). Settling dynamics in distributed networks explain task differences in semantic ambiguity effects: Computational and behavioral evidence. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 273–278. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Azuma, T., & Van Orden, G. G. (1997). Why SAFE is better than FAST: The relatedness of a word's meanings affects lexical decision times. Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 484–504.Google Scholar
Balota, D. A., Yap, M. J., Cortese, M. J., Hutchison, K. A., Kessler, B., Loftis, B., Neely, J. H., Nelson, D. L., Simpson, G. B., & Treiman, R. (2007). The English Lexicon Project. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445–459.Google Scholar
Biographisches Institut GmbH. (2012). Duden online. http://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Wort (retrieved September 14, 2009).Google Scholar
Boada, R., Sánchez-Casas, R., Gavilán, J. M., García-Albea, J. E., & Tokowicz, N. (in press). Effect of multiple translations and cognate status on translation recognition performance of balanced bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, doi:10.1017/S1366728912000223. Published by Cambridge University Press, June 15, 2012.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., Buchmeier, M., Conrad, M., Jacobs, A. M., Bölte, J., & Böhl, A. (2011). The word frequency effect: A review of recent developments and implications for the choice of frequency estimates in German. Experimental Psychology, 58, 412–424.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, M., New, B. (2009). Moving beyond Kucera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 488–496.Google Scholar
de Groot, A. M. B. (1992). Determinants of word translation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 1001–1018.Google Scholar
de Groot, A. M. B., & Comijs, H. (1995). Translation recognition and translation production: Comparing a new and old tool in the study of bilingualism. Language Learning, 45, 467–509.Google Scholar
Degani, T., Prior, A., & Tokowicz, N. (2011). Bidirectional transfer: The effect of sharing a translation. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23, 18–28.Google Scholar
Degani, T., & Tokowicz, N. (2010a) Ambiguous words are harder to learn. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 299–314.Google Scholar
Degani, T., & Tokowicz, N. (2010b). Semantic ambiguity within and across languages: An integrative review. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 63, 1266–1303.Google Scholar
Dijkstra, A. F. J., & van Heuven, W. J. B. (2002). The architecture of the bilingual word recognition system: From identification to decision. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 175–197.Google Scholar
Duffy, S. A., Morris, R. K., & Rayner, K. (1988). Lexical ambiguity and fixation times in reading. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 429–446.Google Scholar
Eddington, C. M. (2009). Uneven or just strange? English–German translation ambiguity. Bachelor of Philosophy thesis, University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Eddington, C. M., Degani, T., & Tokowicz, N. (2012a). English and German translation norms: The role of proficiency in translation ambiguity. Ms., University of Pittsburgh.Google Scholar
Eddington, C. M., Degani, T., & Tokowicz, N. (2012b). Translation Semantic Variability (TSV): A measure of semantic (dis)similarity for translation ambiguous words. Ms., University of PittsburghGoogle Scholar
Elston-Güttler, K. E., & Friederici, A. D. (2005). Native and L2 processing of homonyms in sentential context. Journal of Memory and Language, 52, 256–283.Google Scholar
Elston-Güttler, K. E., Paulmann, S., & Kotz, S. A. (2005). Who's in control? Proficiency and L1 influence on L2 processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1593–1610.Google Scholar
Elston-Güttler, K. E., & Williams, J. N. (2008). First language polysemy affects second language meaning interpretation: Evidence for activation of first language concepts during second language reading. Second Language Research, 24, 167–187.Google Scholar
Frenck-Mestre, C., & Prince, P. (1997). Second language autonomy. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 481–501.Google Scholar
Hogaboam, T. W., & Perfetti, C. A. (1975). Lexical ambiguity and sentence comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 265–274.Google Scholar
Jacquet, M., & French, R. M. (2002). The BIA++: Extending the BIA+ to a dynamical distributed connectionist framework. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 5, 202–205.Google Scholar
Klepousniotou, E., Titone, D., & Romero, C. (2008). Making sense of word senses: The comprehension of polysemy depends on sense overlap. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34, 1534–1543.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Stewart, E. (1994). Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 149–174.Google Scholar
Kroll, J. F., & Tokowicz, N. (2001). The development of conceptual representations for words in a second language. In Nicol, J. (ed.), One mind, two languages: Bilingual language processing, pp. 49–71. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Laxén, J., & Lavaur, J.-M. (2010). The role of semantics in translation recognition: Effects of number of translations, dominance of translations and semantic relatedness of multiple translations. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13, 157–183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LEO GmbH (2012). Leo.org. http://leo.org (retrieved August 10, 2009).Google Scholar
McClelland, J. L., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1981). An Interactive Activation Model of Context Effects in Letter Perception. Part 1: An account of basic findings. Psychological Review, 88, 375–407.Google Scholar
Neely, J. H. (1991). Semantic priming effects in visual word recognition: A selective review of current findings and theories. In Besner, D. & Humphreys, G. W. (eds.), Basic processes in reading: Visual word recognition, pp. 264–336. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Nievas, F., Justicia, F., Cañas, J. J., & Bajo, T. (2005). Lexical processing of ambiguous words: Dominance or associative strength? The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 8, 157–179.Google Scholar
Onifer, W., & Swinney, D. A. (1981). Accessing lexical ambiguities during sentence comprehension: Effects of frequency of meaning and contextual bias. Memory and Cognition, 9, 225–236.Google Scholar
Prior, A., MacWhinney, B., & Kroll, J. F. (2007). Translation norms for English and Spanish: The role of lexical variables, word class, and L2 proficiency in negotiating translation ambiguity. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 1029–1038.Google Scholar
Prior, A., Wintner, S., MacWhinney, B., & Lavie, A. (2011). Translation in and out of context. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 93–111.Google Scholar
Rodd, J., Gaskell, G., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (2002). Making sense of semantic ambiguity: Semantic competition in lexical access. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 245–266.Google Scholar
Schepens, J., Dijkstra, T., & Grootjen, F. (2012). Distribution of cognates in Europe as based on Levenshtein distance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15, 157–166.Google Scholar
Schoonbaert, S., Duyck, W., Brysbaert, M., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2009). Semantic and translation priming form a first language to a second and back: Making sense of the findings. Memory and Cognition, 37, 569–586.Google Scholar
Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2010). E-prime, Version 2.0.8.90 [computer software]. Pittsburgh, PA: Psychology Software Tools.Google Scholar
Setton, R. (2006). Context in simultaneous interpretation. Journal of Pragmatics, 38, 374–389.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. B. (1981). Meaning dominance and semantic context in the processing of lexical ambiguity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 120–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tokowicz, N., & Degani, T. (2010). Translation ambiguity: Consequences for learning and processing. In VanPatten, B. & Jegerski, J. (eds.), Research on second language processing and parsing, pp. 281–293. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N., & Kroll, J. F. (2007). Number of meanings and concreteness: Consequences of ambiguity within and across languages. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 727–779.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N., Kroll, J. F., de Groot, A. M. B., & van Hell, J. G. (2002). Number-of-translation norms for Dutch–English translation pairs: A new tool for examining language production. Behavior Research Methods, 34, 435–451.Google Scholar
Tokowicz, N., Michael, E. B., & Kroll, J. F. (2004). The roles of study-abroad experience and working-memory capacity in the types of errors made during translation. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 255–272.Google Scholar
Turner, M. L., & Engle, R. W. (1989). Is working memory capacity task dependent? Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 127–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Hell, J. G., & de Groot, A. M. B. (1998). Conceptual representation in bilingual memory: Effects of concreteness and cognate status in word association. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1, 193–211.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Eddington Supplementary Material

Appendix

Download Eddington Supplementary Material(File)
File 169.1 KB