Mental Process In Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition

The present study investigates the mental process in second vocabulary acquisition and proposes a Match-Transfer model of bilingual mental lexicon on extension to the spreading ac tivation model for monolinguals. The model is built upon the structure of monolingual mental lexicon which consists of three levels: the conceptual level storing the semantic knowledge, the lemma level s :oring the syntactic knowledge, and the lexeme level storing the phonological and orthograpical knowledge. The model understands the process of L2 word acquisition as the following phases: (1) acquaintance with the L2 lexeme, (2) Matching the L2 lexeme with one corresponding L1 lexeme, which results in a strong association between the two lexemes, (3) Transference of the L1 lexical knowledge stored in lemma and conceptual level to the L2 lexeme, and (4) constant readjustment of the associative pathways.The model is testified by research evidence and experimental findings. The research evidence, mainly collected from bilingual mental lexicon studies and production errors, supports the present model from the representation and production aspects. Future verification for the model in the acquisition aspect is conducted through experiments. The results show that the L2 lexeme is distributed to different L1 equivalents by different learners. Whatever distribution is made, the same learner's L1 and L2 lexemes share the same sets of lexical knowledge in the conceptual level and the learner's new-learnt L2 vocabulary production has explicit traces of ccrresponding L1 lemma and concept.These findings suggest a Match-Transfer strategy underlying learner's mental process in L2 vocabulary acquisition. Though the Match-Transfer model is only tentative, it has the potential of explaining a wide variety of empirical and theoretical issues in second vocabulary acquisition researches.