Testing the Language Mode Hypothesis Using Trilinguals

Abstract

Current multilingual word recognition models differ in their account of non-linguistic context effects, for example effects due to stimulus list composition and task demands. Several models assume that the non-linguistic context can modulate the relative activation of words from different languages. One prominent example of such an approach is the Language Mode view by Grosjean (1997b), according to which the relative state of activation of a multilingual's two or more languages and language-processing mechanisms depends not only on the characteristics of the stimulus input, but also on situational characteristics. However, recent studies do not support this viewpoint. It predicts, for instance, that for Dutch–English bilinguals performing a purely Dutch word recognition task, English word candidates should not be activated. Nevertheless, under precisely those circumstances, Dutch–English and Dutch–French cognates (words with a similar orthography and meaning across languages) were both processed differently from Dutch control words by relatively proficient Dutch–English–French trilinguals. On the basis of this and other studies, we argue in favour of a stimulus-driven model for visual word recognition in which the non-linguistic context cannot affect the relative activation of word candidates from different languages.

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