Exploring the Use of Cognates in Lexical Availability: Differences between Heritage and Non-Heritage Learners.
Having previous knowledge of at least two languages may lead to advantages in the acquisition of an additional language in areas such as vocabulary, as learners may be better equipped to make cross-linguistic comparisons. However, while studies have been carried out on performance in the L1, there h...
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2025 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Sevilla (US) |
| Repositorio: | idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:idus.us.es:11441/179831 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/11441/179831 https://doi.org/10.12795/elia.2025.i25.8 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | heritage learners lexical availability cognates vocabulary production alumnos de herencia disponibilidad léxica cognados producción de vocabulario |
| Sumario: | Having previous knowledge of at least two languages may lead to advantages in the acquisition of an additional language in areas such as vocabulary, as learners may be better equipped to make cross-linguistic comparisons. However, while studies have been carried out on performance in the L1, there has been a clear lack of research on the lexical production of monolingual and bilingual EFL learners and, in particular, of bilingual heritage learners who have the same mother tongue. In addition, although cross-linguistic influence may also lead to negative effects when the influence derives from a lexical error, lexical fluency research to date has scarcely focused on the errors made by learners in lexical availability tasks. The current paper addresses these issues to determine whether heritage learners demonstrate an advantage in terms of cross-linguistic comparisons. To this effect, the study uses a semantic fluency task to analyse the English lexical availability of 134 tenth-grade L2 monolinguals and L3 bilinguals to determine the positive and negative influence of cognates on their lexical productions. Results indicate that quantitative and qualitative differences depend on the lexical domain at hand, though very little negative lexical transfer was observed in either group. These results offer illuminating insights into the differences between heritage and non-heritage learners’ lexical availability and should encourage stakeholders in our increasingly multilingual classrooms to foster the language acquisition of these bilingual learners. |
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