Date of Publication

2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics

Subject Categories

Applied Linguistics | Linguistics

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Department/Unit

English and Applied Linguistics

Thesis Adviser

Allan Benedict I. Bernardo

Defense Panel Chair

Rochelle Irene G. Lucas

Defense Panel Member

Remedios Z. Miciano
Danilo T. Dayag
Melissa Lucia Reyes
Dina S. Ocampo

Abstract/Summary

A series of experimental tasks measuring the participants executive control and lexical access were administered to young adult college students. The purpose of the study is to determine whether there was a difference between the 104 Filipino-English bilinguals and the 106 Chabacano- Filipino-English trilinguals in executive control and lexical access. Conflict is essential in explaining why bilinguals can have an advantage over monolinguals in executive control. According to the parallel L1-L2 activation theory, the linguistic levels: semantic, lexical and phonological nodes in the two language representations are proportionally activated, for example in a picture naming task (Costa, Coloma, & Caramazza, 2000). The simultaneous activation of the two language representations results in conflict. This assumption could serve as a basis on the bilinguals’ constant attention to two language representations in daily discourse wherein the bilinguals inhibitory control constantly decides what language to inhibit and what language to activate. Constant attention to two language representations enhances inhibitory control mechanism which is considered to be an executive control but results in less efficiency in lexical access (Bialystok, Craik & Luk , 2008). It was hypothesized in the present study that young adult trilinguals could have better executive control compared to bilinguals because of the additional language representation. The parallel L1-L2-L3 activation may create an increased conflict that could enhance executive control but may result in the decrement in lexical access. There was an indication that young adult trilinguals showed some advantages over bilinguals on measures of interference suppression, particularly in Simon arrows congruent vs. incongruent trials and control vs. conflict based on accuracy. But, in general, there was no difference between young adult bilinguals and trilinguals in executive control (i.e. in Simon arrows control vs. reverse trials in both accuracy and RT; Shape-matching no-distractor vs. withdistractor trials in terms of RT; Go-no-go lure vs. no-go accuracy trials; and SART inhibit accuracy trials. In other words, both language groups demonstrated the same performance in most of the executive control conditions. The similar performance between Filipino-English bilinguals and Chabacano-Filipino- English trilinguals in executive control and lexical access may have brought about by the influence of Austronesian lexical elements (i.e. Tagalog, Bisaya, Cebuano, Hiligaynon, Sama) in Zamboanga Chabacano (Frake, 1980, Rubino, 2005 & Barrios, 2006). Consequently, the hypothesized increased conflict may not have occurred among trilinguals and therefore resulted in the negative difference in executive control and lexical access compared to bilinguals.

Abstract Format

html

Language

English

Format

Electronic

Accession Number

CDTG004757

Shelf Location

Archives, The Learning Commons, 12F Henry Sy Sr. Hall

Physical Description

1 computer optical disc ; 4 3/4 in.

Keywords

Language and languages; Multilingualism; Bilingualism; Lexical phonology; Chabacano language; Chabacano language--Conversation; Philippine languages

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