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Article published In:
Language Ecology
Vol. 4:2 (2020) ► pp.175–201

A tale of two lexical-decision tasks

The reality of taking the lab to the field

| Pennsylvania State University

As a probe into the degree of integration of the bilingual lexicon, a series of lexical-decision tasks was carried out in two bilingual speech communities with greatly differing linguistic, cultural, and socio-historical characteristics: Misiones province in northeastern Argentina (Portuguese-Spanish), and three indigenous communities in northern Ecuador (Quichua and the mixed language known as Media Lengua). In both cases the results suggest a tightly integrated bilingual lexicon, but the pattern of responses was qualitatively and quantitatively different for each group, to such an extent as to potentially challenge the assumption of universal validity for lexical decision tasks.

Keywords: lexical decision, bilingual communities, Spanish, Portuguese, Quichua, Media Lengua, field research
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Lexical decision tasks
  • 2.Lexical decision #1: Portuguese and Spanish in Misiones, Argentina
    • 2.1The setting
    • 2.2Participants
    • 2.3Materials
    • 2.4Procedure
    • 2.5Results and discussion
  • 3.Lexical decision #2: Quichua and Media Lengua in Ecuador
    • 3.1The setting
    • 3.2Participants
    • 3.3Materials
    • 3.4Procedure
    • 3.5Results and discussion
  • 4.General discussion: A tale of two lexical-decision environments
    • 4.1Similarities between the two sets of results
    • 4.2Principal differences between the two sets of results
    • 4.3Exploring the details of each bilingual environment
  • 5.Conclusion: The cross-linguistic/ cross-cultural validity of lexical decision experiments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 7 May 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.19007.lip
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