Declarative Lexical Knowledge

Abstract

The basic building blocks for language use and development are words and lexical phrases. Operating in our native language, we draw on an immense store of lexical items and have in-depth knowledge of the meaning and usage restrictions of many words and lexical expressions. The many lexical entries in our L1 mental lexicon are not stored randomly, but are structured in a well-organized web with connections or pathways between the words; a structural system that enables us to retrieve words rapidly and with ease, because the access routes in the lexical store are varied and well-established. Can the same be said about foreign language learners’ mental lexicon at different stages of their interlanguage development? By nature, the L2 learner has had less exposure to the target language; so, one would naturally expect the L2 lexicon to differ from the L1 lexicon – not only in relation to size, but also in relation to the structural properties of the word store. But how different is the L2 lexicon? And can differences be traced across learner groups who differ with respect to age, maturity and educational experience? These are some of the research questions we address in this chapter, where we describe our learners’ lexical competence, both in terms of size and the organizational properties of their mental lexicon.