Traducciones cognaticias y reconocimiento visual de palabras en bilingües de gallego y castellano

Abstract

In this paper two experiments carried out with two different samples of Galician-Spanish bilinguals are presented. In the first experiment subjects performed a language decision task, whereas in the second one they responded to a bilingual lexical decision task. In both cases effects of linguistic dominance, language stimuli and word frequency were analyzed. In addition, form similarity was taken into account, selecting cognates (translations sharing both form and meaning) and non-cognates (translations sharing only their meaning). Results reveal that the lexical decision task has a clear advantage over the language decision one, in its capacity to show cognate effects. Thus, in the second experiment we found a significant facilitation effect for L2 low frequency cognates in bilinguals who have a high level competence both in Galician and Spanish, but who are Spanishdominant in reading. Data are interpreted in the light of the most relevant models about bilingual lexicon organization.