LEXICAL REPRESENTATION OF COGNATES AND NONCOGNATES IN COMPOUND BILINGUALS

In four experiments the representation of words in a Dutch-English bilingual lexicon was examined. Within- and between-language repetition-priming and associative (semantic)-priming effects were compared. In Experiments 1 and 2 only cognate words were presented, whereas in Experiments 3 and 4 also noncognates served as stimuli. In Experiment 1 the primes were presented unmasked; in Experiments 2 and 4 they were masked by means of a forward/backward masking technique; in Experiment 3 they occurred under both masked and unmasked presentation conditions. Within- and between-language repetition-priming and associative-priming effects were obtained, both under masked and unmasked presentation conditions, but in the masking condition the between-language associative priming effect for noncognates disappeared. The results suggest separate but connected lexical representations for Dutch-English translation equivalents, both for cognates and noncognates, shared conceptual representations for Dutch-English cognate translations, and separate conceptual representations for noncognate translations. © 1991.