Università Roma Tre

"The multilingual mental lexicon"

This seminar addresses psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of multilingualism. In a first part it will be illustrated how different languages are interconnected in the brain and how second and third language acquisition can be explained from a psycholinguistic perspective. In the main part the seminar focuses on the organization of the bilingual mental lexicon: In a first step, models will be presented that had been developed to explain the monolingual mental lexicon. It will be discussed what aspects of these models can be transferred to model the bilingual mental lexicon. In a second step, different aspects of bilingual models will be focused on such as types of language acquisition (including studies from brain research), role of phonetic similarity, culture-specific orientation of mental concepts etc. Finally, we will discuss the way the mental lexicon is accessed.
In this seminar students will also conduct some little psycholinguistic experiments (e.g. loud-thinking protocols, association experiments in various languages). In doing so they will become familiar with empirical research methods on the one hand, and will get insights into the organization of the multilingual mental lexicon on the other.

(The seminar will be held together with Prof. Dr. Claudia Riehl of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich. Teaching language: German.)

The bibliography will be presented at the first lesson.

"The multilingual mental lexicon"

This seminar addresses psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic aspects of multilingualism. In a first part it will be illustrated how different languages are interconnected in the brain and how second and third language acquisition can be explained from a psycholinguistic perspective. In the main part the seminar focuses on the organization of the bilingual mental lexicon: In a first step, models will be presented that had been developed to explain the monolingual mental lexicon. It will be discussed what aspects of these models can be transferred to model the bilingual mental lexicon. In a second step, different aspects of bilingual models will be focused on such as types of language acquisition (including studies from brain research), role of phonetic similarity, culture-specific orientation of mental concepts etc. Finally, we will discuss the way the mental lexicon is accessed.
In this seminar students will also conduct some little psycholinguistic experiments (e.g. loud-thinking protocols, association experiments in various languages). In doing so they will become familiar with empirical research methods on the one hand, and will get insights into the organization of the multilingual mental lexicon on the other.

(The seminar will be held together with Prof. Dr. Claudia Riehl of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich. Teaching language: German.)

The bibliography will be presented at the first lesson.