English word frequency and recognition in bilinguals: Inter-corpus comparison and error analysis.

OBJECTIVE

This study is the second of a two-part investigation on lexical effects on bilinguals' performance on a clinical English word recognition test. Focus is on word-frequency effects using counts provided by four corpora.

DESIGN

Frequency of occurrence was obtained for 200 NU-6 words from the Hoosier mental lexicon (HML) and three contemporary corpora, American National Corpora, Hyperspace analogue to language (HAL), and SUBTLEX(US). Correlation analysis was performed between word frequency and error rate.

STUDY SAMPLE

Ten monolinguals and 30 bilinguals participated. Bilinguals were further grouped according to their age of English acquisition and length of schooling/working in English.

RESULTS

Word frequency significantly affected word recognition in bilinguals who acquired English late and had limited schooling/working in English. When making errors, bilinguals tended to replace the target word with a word of a higher frequency. Overall, the newer corpora outperformed the HML in predicting error rate.

CONCLUSIONS

Frequency counts provided by contemporary corpora predict bilinguals' recognition of English monosyllabic words. Word frequency also helps explain top replacement words for misrecognized targets. Word-frequency effects are especially prominent for bilinguals foreign born and educated.