This paper examines the implications of the association patterns in our understanding of the mental lexicon. By applying the principles of graph theory to word association data, we intend to explore which measures tap better into lexical knowledge. To that end, we had different groups of English as Foreign language learners complete a lexical…

In the development of their semantic networks, bilinguals can be influenced by the levels of proficiency they have in their second language (L2) and by the age at which they acquired the language. Two exercises, one in word association and one in forced-choice decision-making, were used to test whether the pattern of relative awareness of thematic…

This study examines evidence for the hypothesis (e.g., Muñoz, 2006) that an early starting age is not necessarily more beneficial to the successful learning of L2 inflectional morphology in strictly formal instructional settings. The present author investigated the quantitative and qualitative differences in the production and reception of 5…