Bilingual Semantic Organization

Abstract

To investigate the semantic organization of French-English bilinguals multidimensional scaling (MDS) was applied to a series of direct pair-comparisons among a group of symbols from both of the bilinguals' languages. The terms dealt with the mass media. The results indicate that semantic content, rather than language, is the primary determinant of the bilingual's semantic structure. A two-dimensional solution was produced. The first dimension may be labeled electronic-print and the second, entertainment-information. They account for 75.1% of the variance in the space. The results of a multiple regression indicate that while language can be accounted for in the space it is not explained by the first two dimensions. Thus, language may be considered only a secondary determinant of semantic organization of bilinguals.