One of the ways to investigate the mental lexicon is to use word association tests. Empirical studies comparing associations by children and adults have indicated a tendency for children to give syntagmatic responses, whereas adults give paradigmatic responses. In order to investigate lexical development in L2 acquisition of Swedish we collected data from two groups of students, one in MalmÖ, Sweden and one in Melbourne. Part of the Melbourne group also took the association test in their L1 six months later. Native speakers were used as a control group. The results demonstrate that learners in general tend to focus more on form than content compared to native speakers. This trend was particularly strong for the L2 group in Melbourne who also exhibited more variation in their responses compared to the L2 group in Sweden and the NS control group.
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2020. Word association research and the L2 lexicon. Language Teaching 53:3 ► pp. 237 ff.
BARBOSA, POLIANA, ELENA NICOLADIS & MARGAUX KEITH
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2013. The role of within-language vocabulary size in children's semantic development: evidence from bilingual children. Journal of Child Language 40:4 ► pp. 873 ff.
Håkansson, Gisela & Catrin Norrby
2010. Environmental Influence on Language Acquisition: Comparing Second and Foreign Language Acquisition of Swedish. Language Learning 60:3 ► pp. 628 ff.
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