The study tested vocabulary acquisition of a pseudo-language in Swedish–English bilinguals. A computerized paired-associate learning task was used to teach form-meaning mappings. A learning assessment task was administered after each block. The primary research question was whether subjective typology measures predict conscious and unconscious performance in post-learning outcomes.
The use of typology in language acquisition research could be divided to those of 1) objective typology (the researcher's justified measurements of linguistic similarity), 2) subjective typology (the language learner's unconscious mental representations of linguistic similarity), and 3) conscious typology (the language learner's conscious evaluations of similarity between the two languages). Furthermore, psychotypology can be treated as assumed similarity and perceived similarity (c.f., Kaivapalu, 2004, Kaivapalu & Muikku-Werner, 2010). Ringbom (2007) hypothesized that perceived similarity (as opposed to objective similarity) in language learners is not necessarily symmetrical with respect to direction.The present study tested highly proficient (CEFR C1+) Swedish–English bilinguals. They acquired vocabulary in a pseudo-language derived from typologically unrelated Finnish. None of the participants had productive proficiency in Finnish but for societal reasons have pre-existing knowledge of Finnish phonotactics. A computerized paired-associate learning task was used to teach form-meaning mappings in four blocks of four instances of each words. The participants received both auditory and visual input. A learning assessment task was administered after each block. All presented forms in the artificial language were phonotactically well-formed in Finnish. The meanings were all concrete nouns and were borrowed from one the participants' two languages. Not all form-meaning pairings mapped neatly across the participants' two pre-existing languages.After the learning session, a final learning assessment task, as well as a lexical decision task, were administered in the pseudo-language. Both included taught pseudo-language form-meaning mappings as well as untaught pseudo-language forms that were adjusted to follow Finnish phonotactics from English and Swedish stems. The learning assessment task was a multiple choice picture naming task. The dependent measures, respectively, were the intentionality of transfer from English and Swedish stems as well as reaction times for the two types. Individual subjective typology measures were collected via a psychotypology questionnaire that assessed perceived similarity between English, Swedish, Finnish, and the pseudo-language. The questionnaire was administered both pre- and post-learning.
