Spoken language data were collected from six adult second language (L2) English learners over a year-long period in order to explore the development of word polysemy and frequency use. The data were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the first analysis, the growth of WordNet polysemy values and CELEX word frequency values were examined. For both indexes, significant growth was demonstrated from the 2nd to the 16th week of observation, after which values remained stable. Growth in word polysemy values also correlated with changes in word frequency, supporting the notion that frequency and polysemy effects in word use are related. A second analysis used the WordNet dictionary to explore qualitative changes in word sense use concerning six frequent lexical items in the learner corpus (think, know, place, work, play, and name). A qualitative analysis compared normalized frequencies for each word sense in the first trimester of the study to the later trimesters. Differences in the number of word senses used across trimesters were found for all six words. Analyses 1 and 2, taken together, Crossley, Salsbury, and McNamara Polysemy and Frequency Use in English L2 Speakers support the notion that L2 learners begin to use words that have the potential for more senses during the first 4 months; learners then begin to extend the core meanings of these polysemous words. These findings provide further insights into the development of lexical proficiency in L2 learners and the growth of lexical networks.

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This study uses word information scores from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Psycholinguistic Database to analyse word development in the spontaneous speech data of six adult learners of English as a second language (L2) in a one-year longitudinal study. In contrast to broad measures of lexical development, such as word frequency and lexical diversity, this study analyses L2 learners’ depth of word knowledge as measured by psycholinguistic values for concreteness, imagability, meaningfulness, and familiarity. Repeated measure ANOVAs yielded significant differences over time for concreteness, imagability, and meaningfulness, where the temporal intervals act as the independent variable, and the MRC values function as the dependent variables. Non-significant results were found for familiarity scores. The results provide evidence that learners’ productive vocabularies become more abstract, less context dependent, and more tightly associated over time. This indicates a deeper knowledge of second language vocabulary and has important implications for how vocabulary knowledge can be measured in future studies of L2 lexical development.

This study investigated second language (L2) lexical development in the spontaneous speech of six adult, L2 English learners in a 1-year longitudinal study. One important aspect of lexical development is lexical organization and depth of knowledge. Hypernymic relations, the hierarchical relationships among related words that vary in relation to their semantic specificity (e.g., Golden Retriever vs. dog vs. animal), are an important indicator of both lexical organization and depth of knowledge. Thus, this study used hypernymy values from the WordNet database and a lexical diversity measure to analyze lexical development. Statistical analyses in this study indicated that both hypernymic relations and lexical diversity in L2 learners increase over time. Additionally, lexical diversity and hypernymic values correlated significantly, suggesting that as learners' lexicons grow, learners have access to a wider range of hypernymy levels. These findings are discussed in relation to developing abstractness in language, extending hypernymic knowledge, and the growth of lexical networks.

The effect of animation and concreteness of visuals on immediate recall and long-term comprehension when learning the basic principles and laws of motion.