Bidirectional transfer: The effect of sharing a translation

Abstract

This study investigated reciprocal influences between the first and second languages of bilingual speakers. Participants were monolingual English speakers and bilingual speakers of English and Hebrew who learned Hebrew either as a first language or as a second language. Participants rated the semantic similarity of English word pairs that either shared a Hebrew translation or did not, and that varied in their baseline relatedness in English. Shared-translation pairs (e.g., tool and dish are both translated as “kli” in Hebrew) were rated as more similar in meaning than different-translation pairs by both bilingual groups, but not by the monolinguals. Knowledge of Hebrew influenced the way bilinguals processed words in English not only when Hebrew was the native language but also when it was learned as a second language later in life. These findings provide evidence for bidirectional transfer, and emphasise the dynamic nature of the bilingual lexicon.