Abstract
As a globalized village, we have more bilingual than monolingual speakers today in the world (Grosjean and Li 2013, Chap. 1).
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Suggested Readings
Elman, J., Bates, A., Johnson, A., Karmiloff-Smith, A., Parisi, D., & Plunkett, K. (1996). Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Internet Sites Related to Connectionism and Bilingualism
CHILDES: http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/
Chinese PatPho: http://blclab.org/patpho-for-chinese/
Contextual SOM Package: http://blclab.org/contextual-self-organizing-map-package/
English PatPho: http://blclab.org/patpho-for-english/
SOM Toolbox http://www.cis.hut.fi/somtoolbox/
Other connectionist models of L1 and L2 based on the DevLex and DevLex-II architectures: http://blclab.org/self-organizing-neural-network-models-of-language-acquisition/
The Nengo Neural Simulator: http://www.nengo.ca/
Tlearn Network Simulator: http://www.crl.ucsd.edu/software/
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Appendices
List of Keywords and Concepts
Age of acquisition (AoA), Backpropagation, Bilingual interactive activation (BIA), Bilingual lexical representation, Bilingual simple recurrent network (BSRN), Bilingual single network (BSN), Computational modeling, Connectionism, Connectionist models, Cross-language lexical competition, Cross-language priming, Developmental lexicon (DevLex), Emergentist theories, Hebbian learning, output layer, Interactive activation, Nodes, Parallel distributed processing (PDP), Self-organizing map (SOM), Self-organizing model of bilingual processing (SOMBIP), Sequential activation retention and decay network (SARDNET), Sequential learning, Simple recurrent network (SRN), Simultaneous learning
Thought Questions
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1.
What are the classic models of bilingual lexical memory? How are they related and different from one another?
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How does the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA) model contribute to our understanding of bilingual representation?
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Why do we need to build computational models of bilingual lexical representation? Can computationally implemented models provide more insights that verbal models cannot?
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How is connectionist representation different from traditional verbal models of lexical representation?
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Why do we highlight the importance of developmental changes in connectionist models, and how can we take advantage of the learning principles in these models for understanding bilingual representation?
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What are the basic ingredients of a connectionist model? How is learning simulated in these models?
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7.
Can the DevLex-II model simulate L1 and L2 lexical competition? How does it do so?
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8.
Can the DevLex-II model simulate cross-language semantic priming? How does it do so?
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9.
What does it mean that the L2 is parasitic on the L1 representation, and how is this notion reflected in the computational model?
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10.
What insights can we gain from these models with regard to the critical period hypothesis? Are there fundamental architectural changes in these models that would lend support to a critical period hypothesis based on biological changes across developmental stages?
Applied Issues in Learning and Memory in the Acquisition of an L2 and Vocabulary Learning
Our simulation results may shed some light on bilingual education. For example, our simulation demonstrated that late L2 learners often have compact and fuzzy representations of L2 items in their lexical memory, which leads to competitions and confusions among L2 words during L2 lexical production/retrieval. To reduce such errors, L2 learners and teachers should focus on training on identifying/distinguishing the subtle conceptual differences of similar L2 words. Training of this type may help L2 learners create clearer L2 mental representations of the lexicon.
Suggested Projects
Students can use the Contextual SOM package (available at http://blclab.org) to derive semantic information from multiple languages and represent them in self-organizing maps. Once representations from each language are derived, the student can also use these to simulate cross-language priming effects, following the procedures outlined in Zhao and Li (2013). Students can also explore a variety of other connectionist architectures as presented in the Special Issue on Computational Modeling of Bilingualism (Li 2013).
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Li, P., Zhao, X. (2014). Connectionist Bilingual Representation. In: Heredia, R., Altarriba, J. (eds) Foundations of Bilingual Memory. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9218-4_4
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