Jun 30, 2007

2006/09/06

Li, P. (1996). Spoken word recognition of code-switched words by Chinese-English bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 757–774.

Presentation: Chris
Summary: Renee

This paper attempts to study the mechanisms involved in listeners’ recognition of code-switched words. Two experiments with Chinese-English bilinguals were conducted. The first experiment used a word-gating paradigm, in which listeners were asked to identify a code-switched word with increasing fragments of the word. The second experiment utilized a word-shadowing task. Listeners were asked to repeat the word that would occur after a predesignated point. There are also three variables examined in this study. They include language phonetics, phonotactic structure and context. Results of the experiments showed that interaction of the three variables provides information for a successful recognition of code-switched words. Furthermore, the experiments argued against a language switch which says that bilinguals need more time to process code-switched materials than monolingual materials. Parallel activation and interactive processes offer the best account for the data obtained in a bilingual word recognition situation.

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