The Effect of Semantic Similarity on Learning Ambiguous Words in a Second Language: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

Ambiguous words have multiple meanings. How these multiple meanings interact with each other during ambiguous word learning remains unclear. The current study adopted an event-related potentials (ERPs) technique to explore whether there is an interaction between two meanings when learning second language (L2) ambiguous words and how semantic similarity affects ambiguous word learning. In order to explore this issue, Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to learn pseudowords, which were paired with either two related new meanings (polysemes), two unrelated new meanings (homonyms), or one single new meaning (monosomies) over 2 consecutive days. ERP results revealed that learning the second meaning of a homonym induced a more negative N400 than the first meaning; learning the second meaning of a polyseme tended to produce a more positive late component (LPC) than the first meaning. These results indicate that the first meaning of homonyms may interfere with learning their second meaning. However, the first meaning of polysemous words may facilitate learning their second meaning. The current findings suggest that different mechanisms might be involved in learning L2 homonyms and polysemes.

The impact of learning new meaning on the previously learned meaning of L2 ambiguous words: The role of semantic similarity

“…The results of translation recognition task showed that related new meanings were learned faster and more accurately than unrelated new meanings, suggesting that semantic similarity affects the learning of new meanings for known L2 words. The impact of semantic similarity was further confirmed in a follow-up study by Zhang et al (2020) using ERPs technique. However, up until now, the backward impacts from the new meaning on the previously learned meaning have not received much attention for L2 ambiguous word learning.…”

“…In recent years, some researchers have realized the importance of L2 ambiguous word learning and conducted meaningful studies (Bracken et al, 2017;Lu et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018Zhang et al, , 2020. For example, in the study of Lu et al (2017), to simulate the process of L2 ambiguous word learning, the authors paired each English pseudoword with one meaning or two unrelated meanings and asked participants who were native Chinese speakers to learn these pairs in sequence.…”

“…Other studies have further investigated the impact of semantic similarity on learning a new meaning for previously learned L2 words (Zhang et al, 2018, 2020). For example, in the study of Zhang and her colleagues (2018), Chinese‐English bilinguals were required to learn new meanings for familiar L2 words.…”

Learning new meanings for known L2 words: Long‐term semantic representation is updated to integrate new information after consolidation

“…Compared with learning multiple meanings of an ambiguous L2 word simultaneously (Bracken et al, 2017;Lu et al, 2017), learning new meanings for known L2 words is more common in daily life. Several studies along this line have investigated how semantic relatedness/congruency between new and existing meanings affects the learning of new meaning and interference of existing meaning (Zhang et al, 2018(Zhang et al, , 2020(Zhang et al, , 2022. Zhang et al (2018) had Chinese-English bilinguals learn new meanings with different levels of relatedness to known meanings through Chinese translations for L2 known words.…”

“…congruency, consolidation, ERPs, LPC, N400, word learning by the semantic relatedness/congruency between them (Zhang et al, 2018(Zhang et al, , 2020(Zhang et al, , 2022. However, they did not consider the memory consolidation process.…”