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    Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English

    Cook, V. and Bassetti, Benedetta and Kasai, C. and Sasaki, M. and Takahashi, J. (2006) Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 10 (2), pp. 137-152. ISSN 1367-0069.

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    Abstract

    An experiment investigated whether Japanese speakers’ categorisation of objects and substances as shape or material is influenced by acquiring English, based on Imai and Gentner (1997). Subjects were presented with an item such as a cork pyramid and asked to choose between two other items that matched it for shape (plastic pyramid) or for material (piece of cork). The hypotheses were that for simple objects the number of shape-based categorisations would increase according to experience of English and that the preference for shape and material-based categorisations of Japanese speakers of English would differ from mono¬lingual speakers of both languages. Subjects were 18 adult Japanese users of English who had lived in English-speaking countries between 6 months and 3 years (short-stay group), and 18 who had lived in English-speaking countries for 3 years or more (long-stay group). Both groups achieved above criterion on an English vocabulary test. Results were: both groups preferred material responses for simple objects and substances but not for complex objects, in line with Japanese mono¬linguals, but the long-stay group showed more shape preference than the short-stay group and also were less different from Americans. These effects of acquiring a second language on categorisation have implications for conceptual representation and methodology.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): bilingualism, thought, cognition, classification, linguistic relativity, whorf, japanese
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Benedetta Bassetti
    Date Deposited: 02 Aug 2007
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:29
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/527

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