Chapter 7. Cross-language influences in L2 semantic and conceptual representation and processing

Abstract

Languages come with a unique set of words to label concepts so that sometimes a word in one language does not have a semantic equivalent in another language. This lack of equivalence is multi-faceted: words in two languages can be defined at different levels of abstraction, have different senses, or have conflicting affective connotations. What factors determine semantic equivalence across languages, and how are they incorporated in current theories of bilingual semantic representation? How do bilinguals navigate conflicting meanings or leverage semantic equivalence between two languages? To address these questions, this chapter will draw on recent proposals that combine multimodal experiential and linguistic representations to capture meaning. The multimodal view provides a framework to review distinct types of semantic equivalence at the feature, word, and language level. Finally, the implications of differentiating different types of semantic equivalence for bilingual studies are discussed.