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Multicompetence and L2 users' associative links: being unlike nativelike
Author(s) -
Zareva Alla
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
international journal of applied linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.712
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1473-4192
pISSN - 0802-6106
DOI - 10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00226.x
Subject(s) - bulgarian , social connectedness , associative property , linguistics , psychology , diversity (politics) , set (abstract data type) , test (biology) , associative learning , natural (archaeology) , cognitive psychology , sociology , computer science , social psychology , geography , mathematics , philosophy , anthropology , pure mathematics , programming language , archaeology , paleontology , biology
The study set out to examine the effects of multicompetence on proficient L2 users' associative links. Three groups of 36 participants each were recruited – NSs of English, NSs of Bulgarian, and proficient Bulgarian L2 users of English – who completed a familiarity and word association test. The findings revealed that L2 users' natural drive to main connectivity of their lexicons was the motivation for their building lexicosemantic connectedness – which, however, was unlike the patterns of connectivity maintained by the native speakers of both their languages. This showed that, as a result of their developing multicompetence, the L2 users were unlike nativelike in that they developed their lexicosemantic associative links favoring diversity over communality and language‐neutral idiosyncrasy over L1 or L2 nativelikeness.