2010 12 33 6

Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics (Bimonthly)

Dec. 2010 Vol. 33 No. 6

The Developmental Route of Chinese English Learners Mental Lexicon: Crosssectional and Longitudinal Perspectives
FU Yuping

Qiongzhou University

Abstract
This paper reports a study on the developmental route of Chinese English learners mental lexicon by analyzing the responses to high-frequency stimulus words obtained from a crosssectional word association experiment and the responses to low-frequency stimulus words obtained from a longitudinal experiment. The result indicated the following: (1) Semantic associations accounted for most responses to the high-frequency words by four groups of participants and the semantic associations increased in the participants mental lexicon as they made progress in language proficiency. (2) A large proportion of non-semantic associations accounted for responses to the low-frequency words, but with the increase of language proficiency, the participants mental lexicon changed steadily from non-semantic to semantic. (3) Certain responses moved backward from semantic to non-semantic, an indication that second language vocabulary acquisition does not develop by a linear route but in a zigzag fashion. (4) In adult Chinese English learners mental lexicon, paradigmatic knowledge develops faster than syntagmatic knowledge. The incremental nature of vocabulary acquisition suggests that both teachers and learners be patient enough to make an acquisition plan on a long-term basis.

Key words: mental lexicon; developmental route; word association; semantic response

1. Introduction
The long-neglected Cinderellavocabularyhas received more and more attention in second language (L2) teaching and research since the 1980s. There have been more and more empirical studies on mental lexicon, vocabulary acquisition, word storage and
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access/retrieval (e.g., Aitchison, 1987; Carter, 1998; Cui, 2008; Meara, 1983; Namei, 2004; Nation, 2001; OGorman, 1996; Schmitt, 1998a, 1998b; Sderman, 1993; Wolter, 2001). However, these researches are mostly static and cross-sectional (e.g., Meara, 1983; Namei, 2004; OGorman, 1996; Sderman, 1993; Wolter, 2001); little attempt has been made at longitudinal examination of the developmental route of L2 mental lexicon on the part of Chinese English learners. In order to gain understanding of this developmental route, the present researcher conducted two word association (WA) experiments from crosssectional and longitudinal perspectives.

2. Literature Review
A better understanding of the internal structure of the mental lexicon can give much help to the understanding of the nature of the L2 learners lexical development, which in turn may provide possible implications for the ways in which words might be studied in formal instructional context. Having an efficient and effective mental lexicon can improve vocabulary acquisition. An effective means to exploring the L2 learners mental lexicon is the WA experiment, a reliable and widely used instrument that holds great promise in L2 research and assessment since rich information can often be gained from association responses when compared with other methods (Schmitt, 1998a: 390). A basic word association test (WAT) is to ask a subject to give the first word coming to mind when being presented a stimulus word. Researchers suggest that a word produced spontaneously in response to a stimulus word may have strong link to it in the mental lexicon. As stated by Aitchison, an analysis of these responses to a prompt word may give useful information about how words might be linked together in a persons mind (1987: 23). British psychologist Francis Galton pioneered the WAT and recorded the mental lexicon structure in 1883. The idea was later seized in both psychological and linguistic studies, which flowered in the early20th century with the appearance of a lot of WA norm lists (Kent & Rosanoff, 1910, cited in Schmitt, 1998a: 290; Woodrow & Lowell, 1916, cited in Schmitt, 1998a: 290; OConner 1928, cited in Schmitt, 1998a: 290; Schellenberg, 1930, cited in Schmitt, 1998a: 290). Kent and Rosanoff (1910, cited in Singleton, 1999) used a list of 100 English words in their experiment to establish a norm for treating their psychiatric patients. Ever since then researchers have employed the list in further WA studies for both normal children and adults. In the 1960s and 1970s, WAT underwent a second prosperity mostly in the field of psychology, where they were commonly used to evaluate the cognitive development, social attitudes and assimilation of L1 children (Schmitt, 1998a: 389). The following are commonly found in these studies: (a) Native speakers responses mainly fall into paradigmatic and syntagmatic categories with rare clang associations. (b) Children tend to give more clang associations than adults. As clang associations decrease, syntagmatic responses increase. This can be compared to adults associations, which are more paradigmatic. (c) The syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift occurs between ages of five and ten as learners language experience increases (Entwisle, 1966; Entwisle et al., 1964; Entwisle & Muuss, 1968; Ervin-Tripp, 1961; Ruke-Dravina, 1971). This shift implies
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that young children often respond with a word normally following the stimulus word in a sentence, namely, with syntagmatic word associations, whereas older children and adults frequently respond with a replacement word, i.e., paradigmatic associations (Entwisle etal., 1964: 19; Ruke-Dravina, 1971: 77). (d) Low-frequency words mainly induce clangother associations (Beck, 1981; Postman, 1970; Stolz & Tiffany, 1972). Entwisle (1966: 74) holds that increased exposure to language determines the developmental stages of association for each word, as shown in Figure 1. The late syntactic responses are different from the early ones in that they are expansions in meaning and indicate a more flexible and complete comprehension of a concept. Entwisle also contends that the most frequent words are the only ones that go through all these stages, while low-frequency words develop only partially (see also Postman, 1970).
Increasing exposure Anomalous early syntactic paradigmatic late syntactic

Figure 1. Developmental stages in WAs by Entwisle (1966) Paul Meara took the lead in applying WATs to SLA research. After a series of free WATs, he came to the conclusion that, compared with native speakers, (a) connections between words in L2 learners mental lexicon are less stable; (b) phonology appears to play a prominent organizing role in L2 mental lexicon; and (c) semantic links between words in L2 tend to differ in a systematic way (1983: 30). These findings were confirmed and quoted by many scholars and researchers (e.g., Carter, 1998; Channell, 1988; Harley, 1995; Zhang, 2004). However, they were also criticized and challenged by quite a few other empirical studies (e.g., Cunningham, 1990; Namai, 2004; OGorman, 1996; Singleton, 1999; Sderman, 1993; Wolter, 2001). Cunningham (1990) conducted a WA research on two groups of pupils whose native language was Irish and found that the group with more English input provided more paradigmatic responses (ParaRs) and less phonological responses. A study by OGorman (1996) shed further light on this issue. Her data were collected from L2 WAT responses of 22 Cantonese speakers whose English was in the intermediate level. In this investigation, OGorman expected to find evidence in support of Mearas view, but her data turned out the opposite waymost responses had clear semantic links with relevant stimuli. Sderman (1993) carried out a WA experiment on English learners whose native languages were Finnish and Swedish respectively and found that each lexical item had its own processing history. Whats more, she also indicated that the syntagmaticparadigmatic shift might not be caused by learners language proficiency because her experiment showed that high-proficiency learners responses, especially the responses to low-frequency stimuli, also included a large number of clang-other responses while there were also quite a number of ParaRs among low-proficiency learners responses. Wolter (2001) took into consideration the degree of vocabulary familiarity. He confirmed Sdermans finding that the so-called syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift was indeed a response change from phonological to semantic and that the progression for
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individual words could be viewed as moving from a state in which phonological and other non-semantic connections are dominant to a state where syntagmatic or paradigmatic connections take precedence (2001: 65-66). Namei compared the responses of 100 Persian-Swedish bilingual participants with 100 native speakers of Persian and Swedish. Her results proved that phonologically-based organization is a primary acquisition feature of every individual word (2004: 263) and that the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift was not an organizational characteristic of the whole mental lexicon, but rather a developmental feature of every individual word, indicating increased word knowledge (2004: 382). Compared with mental lexicon research in the West, related studies in China are just in bud; they started in the early 1990s with the work by Gui and other researchers (1992). In Lis study (2004), the results of WAT showed that L2 vocabulary knowledge had obvious influence on the learners use of semantic information. Using Wolters word lists as stimulus words, Zhang (2004) explored 40 advanced Chinese English learners WAs and found that most of the learners responses were phonological, which offered support to Mearas view that the structure of L2 mental lexicon was predominantly phonological. Bai (2005) carried out an empirical study among his non-English-major postgraduates. He discovered that L2 mental lexicon is more unstable than that of L1 and that unfamiliar words induced clangs or no association in students mind (2005: 30). All in all, studies of L1 and L2 WAs show that a) both native and non-native speakers experience a syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift, which is an indication of increased lexical knowledge in words being tested; b) to low-frequency words, both adult native speakers and advanced learners produce responses comparable to those of child native speakers; (c) each individual word has its own processing history and will experience a developmental course from non-semantic to semantic; and (d) the mental lexicon of native and nonnative speakers is in a constant flux, because new words are being learned while acquired words are being relearned or consolidated. However, traditional WATs mostly chose familiar high-frequency words as stimuli (e.g., Kent-Rosanoff list) and as a result, failed to draw conclusions about the whole lexicon. Only a few studies to date have attempted to study native speakers responses to low-frequency words (Beck, 1981; Stolz & Tiffany, 1972), not to speak of studies concerning non-native speakers (Meara, 1983). To bridge the gap and gain understanding of the developmental route of the whole mental lexicon, the present researcher conducted two WA experiments using high and low-frequency words as stimuli from both crosssectional and longitudinal perspectives.

3. Research Design
3.1 Research Questions This study was guided by the following research questions: A. What are the general trends of the participants three kinds of responses (ParaRs, SynRs and clangs) in the cross-sectional experiment (Experiment 1) and longitudinal
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experiment (Experiment 2)?1 B. What are the general trends of the participants semantic responses (SRs) and nonsemantic ones (NSRs) in these two experiments? C. Is it true that high-frequency words elicit more SRs and low-frequency words induce more NSRs? 3.2 Participants Experiment 1 included four groups of participants from different proficiency levels. They came from three intact classes of senior school students in Grade 2 (Group 1 = 52), firstyear and third-year English majors (Group 2 = 57 and Group 3 = 60) and 30 university English teachers (Group 4) from Hainan Province. A cohort of 50 Chinese English majors participated in Experiment 2. They were chosen from two intact sophomore classes (26 participants in Class 3 and 24 in Class 4) in a vocational college from Shandong Province. All the participants native language was Chinese, and none of them had ever lived in an English-speaking environment except for the teachers group in Experiment 1. The information of the participants in the final statistics is listed in Table 1. Table 1. The participants detailed information in the final statistics
Experiment 1 Participants NOS Female Male Average age Group 1 50 21 29 16.8 Group 2 50 30 20 19.5 Group 3 50 30 11 19.5 Group 4 30 20 10 32.4 Experiment 2 2nd-year English majors 41 35 6 19.6

NOS = number of participants; Group 1 = 2nd-year senior students; Group 2 = 1st-year English majors; Group 3 = 3rd-year English majors; Group 4 = English teachers

3.3 Instruments According to different research purposes, WATs fall into four types: continued WATs, continuous WATs, free WATs, and controlled WATs. Researchers usually use free WATs because responses in free association are thought to be the most direct and immediate reflection of human understanding behind the linguistic forms or semantic meanings. Therefore, this study adopted the single, free WAT, in which the participant is required to produce one response to each stimulus with no restriction in the choice of response (Kruse et al., 1987: 143).
3.3.1 Stimulus Words in Experiment 1

The stimulus words in Experiment 1 were based on the Kent-Rosanoff WA list (1910, cited in Postman & Keppel, 1970: 3) with 100 frequently occurring and emotionally neutral English words. One of the advantages of using Kent-Rosanoff WA list is that it has been used in many studies, both with natives and nonnative language learners at different proficiency levels, age levels, and socio-economic levels. Furthermore, there are established
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WA norms based on the list (Kiss et al., 1973; Postman & Keppel, 1970), which provide an opportunity to compare the responses from L2 learners and those from the native speakers of English. The second advantage is that most of the words on the list are highly frequent and can thus serve as the stimulus words with learners across a wide range of proficiency levels. The weakness of the list, however, is that some of the stimulus words are so common that both native speakers and L2 learners produce predictable/stereotypical responses. To overcome the limitation, a word screening procedure was adopted to sift out words eliciting stereotypical responses as shown in the Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus (EAT)1 (Kiss et al., 1973). That is, the stimulus words typically eliciting a single, dominantly primary response were not included in the present study. The yardstick was that the most frequent responses to the stimulus words, as reported in the EAT, should not exceed 20% of all the reported responses. In this way, the experiment avoided stimulus words like BLACK or DOG, which typically elicit a very narrow range of responses, and selected stimulus words typically generating a wide variety of different responses. Following this criterion, the experiment selected 45 high-frequency words which were required to be mastered by both middle school students and non-English majors (Ministry of Education of the PRC, 2001; Higher Education Institutions, Ministry of Education of the PRC, 2007).
3.3.2 Stimulus Words in Experiment 2

To ensure the novelty of the stimulus words in Experiment 2, a pilot study was conducted before the experiment to test whether the participants, who were chosen from another parallel intact class in the same college, knew the chosen 78 words from Units 4 and 5 in their textbook (Li, 1999). These participants were required to write down Chinese meaning of each word. As a result, they did not know 45 words, among which 40 were selected as stimuli. According to the teaching syllabus, these words are in the 12,000-word list required to be mastered by English majors (Wu & Li, 2002). 3.4 Data Collection Procedures
3.4.1 Data Collection

To collect data in WATs, Wolter (2001) distinguished four different methods, namely, the aural-oral method, the aural-written method, the written-oral method, and the writtenwritten method. Due to the lack of a natural language learning environment, Chinese English learners do better in reading and writing than in listening and speaking. Therefore, the present study adopted the written-written method, which had yielded fruitful results in many studies (e.g., Schmitt, 1998a; Schmitt & Meara, 1997; Singleton, 1999) and had been proved to be timesaving and easy to administrate. Before either experiment, the participants were seated in a multi-media classroom in a regular class setting. Each of them was assigned one sheet of paper with written instructions at the top, followed by 45 slots in Experiment 1 and 40 slots in Experiment 2. They were first required to carefully read the instructions, which were in both English and Chinese. Then, they practiced 4 extra stimulus words with the help of the researcher.
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The stimuli were presented to them one at a time on the screen, which remained there for 5 seconds and then a blank screen for 10 seconds in Experiment 1 and 20 seconds in Experiment 2. When a stimulus word was displayed on the screen, the participants were asked to record spontaneously the first word coming to mind without hesitation. They were not permitted to consult any dictionaries and reference books, neither were they allowed to discuss with each other or go back to their work on the previous stimuli. The time period it took to finish the test papers was about 10 minutes for Experiment 1 and 20 minutes for Experiment 2. The difference between the two experiments was that the participants in Experiment 2 had three tests with an interval of one and a half months between Test 1 and Test 2 and between Test 2 and Test 3 (see Figure 2) and they followed the same procedure with the same stimuli in different orders respectively.
One and a half month later One and a half month later

Test 1

Test 2

Test 3

Figure 2. Specific procedures of the word association Experiment 2

3.4.2 Data Encoding

Data encoding was composed of two stages, lemmatization and classification of the responses.
3.4.2.1 Lemmatization of the Responses

After all the data were collected, two groups of teachers (two for each group) worked together and input all the raw data into Excel files with the following minor modifications of the response words: A. The inflected forms of the responses were treated as one occurrence of its base word. For instance, babies was regarded as the repetition of the stimulus word BABY and counted as one occurrence of BABY. (In this study, stimulus words are given in capital and italics, and responses or associations in italics.) B. A misspelled response was treated as one occurrence of the word in its correct form if it can be pronounced roughly the same as the word. For instance, scenry for scenery and afrad for afraid.
3.4.2.2 Classification of the Responses

Classification of the responses is time-consuming and far more complicated than the easy conduction of WAT since the participants often think of ambiguous responses that are hard to be classified into the pre-designed types. Meara made a similar comment: Personally, I have always found that this paradigmatic/syntagmatic distinction is very difficult to work in practice, especially when you cannot refer back to the testee for elucidation (1983: 30). Based on traditional WAT models, responses in this study were classified into three types: paradigmatic response (ParaR), syntagmatic response (SynR) and clang-other response (Clang). To keep consistency in classification, the definitions
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of these types of responses were distinguished clearly beforehand with examples taken from the present study. Two teachers with applied linguistic background worked together and classified the responses independently with reference to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Oxford Dictionary of English and Oxford Collocations Dictionary for Students of English. In case they did not agree with each other, the native English speaking teachers were asked for advice. ParaRs are words from the same word class as the stimulus word and can be substituted for it in a given sentence. Figure 3 gives an illustration of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations (Richards et al., 2000: 463). In certain cases, words from different word classes were also classified as ParaRs because they had a clear semantic relation to the stimulus word. For instance, in some participants mind, the responses to stimuli CHIC, GRACE and CONFIRM were fashion, beautiful and sure respectively. These responses had clear semantic connections to the stimuli but and did not form clear sequential or collocational relations with them; therefore, these responses were classified as ParaRs. ParaRs in the present study consist of hyponyms, synonymy, antonyms and meronyms.
He handed gave passed threw money to me. = syntagmatic relations = paradigmatic relations

Figure 3. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations (Richards et al., 2000: 463) As shown in Figure 3, SynRs describe a left-to-right or sequential relationship between stimuli and responses; they are commonly known as collocations. The response word is usually a word from a different word class (Aitchison, 1987: 78). For instance, all the words in the sentence He handed money to me (see Figure 3) can be said to have syntagmatic relations with each other. A SynR response is an association, which, together with the stimulus word, forms a syntagm (Richards et al., 2000: 463). In this study a syntagm could be a noun phrase (SCRAMBLE-egg), verbal phrase (PREDICT-earthquake), or a short sentence (SHREW-rude). Words from the same word class as the stimulus word but form a clear sequential relation with the stimulus were also classified as SynR (Zhang, 2004: 75), such as STRIPE-cloth, SHREW-bad mood and VERSE-rhyme. Five kinds of responses were classified into clangs: (a) Responses that were clearly related to certain phonological or orthographical features of the stimulus word, but bore no obvious semantic relationship to them (e.g., BEET-beat; BLARE-glare) (b) Unclassifiable responses like PARISH-color, VERSE-turnover, BLARE-head, etc. (c) Responses such as PREDICT- prediction, THRIVING-thrive, SUPPOSITIONsuppose, GRACE-graceful and so on were also classified as clangs. This was so because this kind of responses and their corresponding stimuli belong to the same
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word families (Laufer, 1997; Nation, 1990, 2001). (d) Responses to wrongly perceived words that bore a vague phonological or orthographic resemblance to the stimuli. For instance, BREACH was perceived as high frequency words BEACH or BENCH and thus led to the occurrences of sea, sand, coast, ocean, bank, water, river and sit, seat respectively. (e) No response.
3.4.3 Data Analysis

The statistic tools used in this study were SPSS 11.5 and Excel 2007. All the responses were keyed into the computer in word forms and in their respective response types. The statistic analysis included calculating the number and percentage of each response type and computing frequencies and chi-squares with response types as the dependent variable in order to make comparisons of results between and within the four groups or three tests. The first two research questions were answered by comparing overall responses (i.e., ParaRs, SynRs and clangs), SR and NSR and describing cross-sectional and longitudinal changes of the three response types in both experiments. Chi-square tests were employed to make comparisons. In order to answer the third research question, word frequency effect on response types was analyzed and visualized with a bar graph.

4. Results
4.1 General Trends of the Participants Three Kinds of Responses in Both Experiments Table 2 gives a detailed profile of the three types of WA responses produced in Experiment 1. The general trend of response types in Experiment 1 was roughly consistent: ParaRs were the largest category, SynRs came second and clangs were the smallest. The result of a chi-square analysis showed a significant difference among the response frequencies in the four groups (see Table 2). The general trend of response types in Experiment 2 was a little different: in all the three tests, clangs were the largest category, ParaRs came second and SynRs were the smallest. That is to say, the same pattern could be detected as to the ranking of the three response types: clangs > ParaRs > SyRs. The result of a chi-square analysis showed a significant difference among the response frequencies in the three tests (see Table 3). All the groups in the experiments produced fewer SynRs than ParaRs, and this revealed that learners were relatively strong in associating words in their hierarchical relationship but weak in producing horizontal relations. Table 2. Frequencies of the three response types in Experiment 1
Group 1 (n = 50) Group 2 (n = 50) Group 3 (n = 50) Group 4 (n = 30) count expected residual count expected residual count expected residual count expected residual ParaR SynR 804 712 892.5 810.5 -88.5 -98.6 843 755 892.5 810.5 -49.5 -55.6 922 847 892.5 810.5 29.5 36.4 644 604 535.5 486.3 108.5 117.7

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Group 1 (n = 50) Group 2 (n = 50) Group 3 (n = 50) Group 4 (n = 30)

count expected residual count expected residual count expected residual count expected residual Clang. 734 546.9 187.1 652
2

546.9

105.1

481 df = 6

546.9

-65.9

102

328.2 p = .000

-226.2

Pearson Chi-square

= 328.351

Asymp. Sig.(2-sided)

ParaR = paradigmatic response; SynR = syntagmatic response; clang = clang-other responses

Table 3. Frequencies of the three response types in Experiment 2

Test 1 (n = 41) count ParaR SynR Clang. 398 302 940 expected 448.3 362.7 829.0 residual -50.3 -60.7 111.0 = 68.960
2

Test 2 (n = 41) count 423 378 839

Test 3 (n = 41) residual -25.3 15.3 10.0 count 524 408 708 expected 448.3 362.7 829.0 p = .000 residual 75.7 45.3 -121.0

expected 448.3 362.7 829.0 df = 4

Pearson Chi-square

Asymp. Sig.(2-sided)

4.2 General Trends of the Participants SRs and NSRs in Both Experiments Since all the ParaRs and SynRs had some semantic relations with the stimuli in some way, they were combined together into the semantic associations. On the contrary, the clangs at most bore some phonological or orthographic resemblance to the stimuli and thus were regarded as non-semantic associations. A complete developmental trend of the participants SRs and NSRs in the two experiments was obtained (see Tables 4 and 5). In Experiment 1, the teachers group gave the largest number of SRs while the Grade 2 senior school students group produced the least. SRs made up an overwhelming majority of the responses given by the four groups of participants. The result of a chi-square analysis indicated a significant difference among the SRs and NSRs in the four groups. In Experiment 2, the participants gave the largest number of SRs (932) in Test 3 and the least in Test 1 (700). However, NSRs made up a majority of the responses in Tests 1 and 2. It was only in Test 3 that the number of SRs slightly surpassed that of NSRs. The result of a chi-square analysis showed a significant difference among the response frequencies in the three tests. Table 4. Frequencies of the SRs and NSRs in Experiment 1
Group 1 (n = 50) Group 2 (n = 50) Group 3 (n = 50) Group 4 (n = 30) count expected residual count expected residual count expected residual count expected residual SR NSR 1516 734 1703.1 546.9 -187.1 187.1 1598 652
2

1703.1 546.9

-105.1 105.1

1769 481 df = 3

1703.1 546.9

65.9 -65.9

1248 102

1021.8 328.8 p = .000

226.2 -226.2

Pearson Chi-square

= 327.611

Asymp. Sig.(2-sided)

SR = semantic response; NSR = non-semantic response

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Table 5. Frequencies of the SRs and NSRs in Experiment 2

Test 1 (n = 41) count ParaR Clang. 700 940 expected 811.1 828.9 residual -111.1 111.1 = 65.996
2

Test 2 (n = 41) count 792 839

Test 3 (n = 41) residual -9.7 9.7 count 932 708 expected 811.1 828.9 p = .000 residual 120.9 -120.9

expected 801.7 819.3 df = 2

Pearson Chi-square

Asymp. Sig.(2-sided)

Table 6. longitudinal changes of response types in Experiment 2

81

Types of change Count Percent(%)

Up

Down

Static Semantic 326 19.87

Clang 369 22.5

Up-down

Down-up

449 27.38

221 13.48

124 7.56

151 9.21

Up = change from clang to semantic response; Down = change from semantic to clang response; Static semantic = semantic response in all three tests; Static clang = clang responses in all three tests; Up-down = change from clang to semantic to clang again; Down-up = change from semantic to clang to semantic again; Total number = 1640 (40 stimulus words 41 participants)

Although the general trend of change in response types is from non-semantic to semantic, it does not exclude the possibility that responses to individual words may remain the same or even change in the opposite direction. Table 4 summarizes the longitudinal changes of responses. As shown in the table, the vast majority of response types remained static: in 326 out of 1640cases, the participants produced paradigmatic or syntagmatic responses in all three tests, and in 369 cases, the participants produced clang-other responses in the three tests. These cases accounted for 42.37% of the total number of responses. That is to say, about 42% of the responses remained the same throughout the three tests. In the 945 (449+221+124+151) cases where changes did occur, the major direction of the changes is from non-semantic to semantic responses (221+124 vs. 449+151), which accounted for the steady increase in the number of semantically related responses and the steady decrease in the number of non-semantic responses. As shown in Table 4, 124 cases changed from clang to semantic and then to clang again, 151 cased changed from semantic to clang and then to semantic again. It indicated that with the increase of language exposure, some words may be consolidated and further integrated, while other words may be forgotten for the lack of consolidation. The existence of these up-down and down-up responses showed that some words may develop in a zigzag fashion but not by a linear route, which is in line with Zhangs findings (2004). The above data suggested that with the increase of vocabulary knowledge, most of the newly learned words in the L2 mental lexicon may change from unknown to partial known, then familiar and consolidated and finally further integrated; however, there were also cases of backsliding, i.e., moving backward from semantic to non-semantic, because some words may be forever or temporarily forgotten due to the lack of exposure or practice. Therefore, the integration of these words were much more complicated, which proved Mearas view that L2 mental lexicon is in a state of flux (1983).

The Developmental Route of Chinese English Learners Mental Lexicon

4.3 Commonality Analysis of SRs and NSRs in Both Experiments The degree of commonality (Schmitt, 1998a) in stimulus-response WA was analyzed by counting the Top Three most frequently given responses to each stimulus in both experiments (Appendices 3 and 4). As far as SRs were concerned, the participants produced many more ParaRs than SynRs (54.07% vs. 32.59% in Experiment 1 and 47.5% vs. 8.31% in Experiment 2). As shown in Appendices 3 and 4, 16 of the 45 stimuli in Experiment 1 induced at least one NSR among the most frequent responses, while 42 of the 45 stimuli in Experiment 2 induced 53 NSRs, accounting for 44.19% of all the top three responses, a much higher percentage than that in Experiment 1 (13.34%). This indicated that low-frequency words produced many more NSRs than high-frequency ones.
100 Test 3 Group 1 Group 2 Semantic Non-semantic Group 3

80 60 40 20 0

Test 2

Test 1

Group 4

Figure 4. Mean proportions of SRs and NSRs to high-low frequency stimuli Table 7. Mean proportions of SRs and NSRs to high-low frequency stimuli
Group 1 Semantic Non-semantic 67.38 32.62 Group 2 71.02 28.98 Group 3 78.62 21.38 Group 4 92.44 7.56 Test 1 42.68 57.32 Test 2 48.82 51.18 Test 3 56.83 43.17

4.4 Word Frequency Effect on Response Types To examine word frequency effect on the response types, a comparison was made between the results of the two experiments. That is, the proportions of SRs and NSRs induced by high-frequency words in Experiment 1 and low-frequency words in Experiment 2 were compared. As indicated in Figure 4 and Table 6, more SRs were induced by high-frequency stimuli than by low-frequency ones. Even the Grade 2 senior school students gave more SRs to high-frequency words than 2nd-year English majors did to low-frequency words (67.38% vs. 56.83%). With the increase in the proficiency of the participants, NSRs were on the decline while SRs were on the rise. Another noticeable trend was that NSRs induced by low-frequency stimuli experienced little change across the three tests, suggesting limited progress on the part of the participants and nearly no exposure to them during the three months.

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5. Discussion
The analysis in Experiment 1 revealed that SRs dominated the four groups responses to high-frequency words. There was a positive correlation between language proficiency and semantic associations; that is, the higher the participants language proficiency become, the more semantic associations there were in their mental lexicon. That is to say, with the development of language proficiency, there is a general trend with obvious increase in SRs and gradual decrease in NSRs. Therefore, despite Mearas prediction that phonology plays a leading role in L2 mental lexicon organization (1983: 30), a tentative conclusion can be drawn from this study about the developmental route of Chinese English learners mental lexicon: with the development of language proficiency and the increasing exposure of language materials, Learners mental lexicon will develop steadily from non-semantic to semantic. The results of Experiment 2 revealed that although clangs were the largest type of responses in the three tests, there did exist a shift from a more phonologically-based pattern to a more semantically-related pattern across these tests. Thus, an exploratory conclusion is that as more new words are learned and become familiar and further integrated, learners mental lexicon develops steadily from a more form-based pattern to a more semantic-dominated one; the participants made steady progress. However, there were also cases of backsliding, i.e., moving backward from semantic to non-semantic, because some words may be forgotten due to the lack of exposure or practice. Therefore, we can draw a tentative conclusion that L2 vocabulary acquisition does not develop by a linear route but in a zigzag fashion. This dynamic nature of L2 mental lexicon suggests that words are learned incrementally (Schmitt, 1998b: 283) and that lexical acquisition requires repeated exposure (Zhang, 2004: 197). The commonality analysis indicates that the participants produced more ParaRs than SynRs in both experiments and thus reveals an L2-specific route of word associative knowledge. As discussed by Wolter (2006), due to the pre-existing L1 knowledge and welldeveloped cognitive system, it is insensible for L2 adult learners to follow the acquisition route of L1 learners, that is, the development of syntagmatic knowledge has priority over that of paradigmatic connections. Furthermore, unlike L1 children, adult L2 learners do not have the same social and linguistic exposure. Thus they can only build up their semantic connections in the classroom setting with the help of teachers instruction, extensive reading and also their existing L1 knowledge. Finally, the strategies of traditional vocabulary teaching and learning in Chinese context, such as the introduction of new words based on similar sounds or the same roots, synonyms, antonyms and hyponyms have all contributed to the strong paradigmatic and the weak syntagmatic connection in learners mental lexicon. All these factors explain why their paradigmatic knowledge develops faster than their syntagmatic knowledge. From this understanding, the indicator of L2 lexical development needs to be re-oriented by saying that the increase of syntagmatic responses is much more important than the increase of paradigmatic ones (Wolter, 2006). The result that clang-other associations dominated the responses throughout the
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three tests in Experiment 2 is in line with previous research (Beck, 1981; Meara, 1983; Wolter, 2001; Zhang, 2004). It does not necessarily mean that the participants possess poor vocabulary knowledge but indicates that the organization of the L2 mental lexicon is initially phonological. That is to say, categorizing unfamiliar words phonologically may be characteristic of early stages of vocabulary acquisition. The form-based feature of lexical organization is not a characteristic of language proficiency but rather an elementary acquisition feature of every individual word (Namei, 2004: 363). The main reason for a small quantity of semantic responses across the three tests in Experiment 2 was obviously that the stimuli used in this study were newly learned low-frequency words and that the participants had not gained full mastery of these words; that is, the semantic links of these words in their mind were not stable and thus were easily forgotten.

6. Conclusion
This study employed free WATs to investigate Chinese English learners responses to some high-and low-frequency words, and it revealed the developmental route of L2 mental lexicon: with the development of language proficiency and the increasing exposure of language materials, the learners mental lexicon will develop steadily from non-semantic to semantic. However, there are also cases of backsliding, that is, moving backward from semantic to non-semantic, because some words could have been forgotten due to the lack of exposure or practice. Therefore, L2 vocabulary acquisition does not develop by a linear route but in a zigzag fashion. Due to the pre-existing L1 knowledge, well-developed cognitive system, different social-linguistic exposure from L1 children and strategies of traditional vocabulary teaching and learning in Chinese context, adult Chinese English learners paradigmatic knowledge develops faster than syntagmatic knowledge with the latter weaker than the former in their mental lexicon. The findings of the present study further imply that vocabulary acquisition is not an all-or-nothing affair but a life-long process and that both teachers and learners should be patient enough to make an acquisition plan on a long-term basis. First, L2 teachers should deal with vocabulary in a well-planned and principled rather than a haphazard way. They need to adopt different methods to different words. Second, in order to acquire different types of word knowledge, learners ought to form a habit of daily extensive readingan indispensable part of their language learning. Third, due to the Forgetting Curve, words need recycling in order to be consolidated in short-term memory and cemented in long-term memory. Lastly, both teachers and learners should give special attention to co-text and context vocabulary learning (i.e., chunk memorization) in order to reinforce the strength of syntagmatic relations. Only in this way could English learners probably integrate words into L2 mental lexicon to ensure their quick access and correct use. The findings of the present study also indicate some directions for future research. First, longitudinal studies with longer intervals are recommended to ensure a more reliable picture of the process of vocabulary acquisition and also that of the developmental routes
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of Chinese English learners mental lexicon. Second, the intricacy of correspondence between different types of words in the L2 mental lexicon need to be teased out by exploring the relationship between the stimulus word types (e.g., word class and concreteness) and the response word types. Third, a comparison of associative responses produced by participants of different L1 backgrounds can be conducted to investigate the cross-cultural differences and the L1 transferences. Fourth, the consistency between the written-written method and other approaches like aural-oral, aural-written or oral-written may be checked to explore the method-effect on the outcome of the word association. With all these aspects adequately addressed, a better understanding will be gained about the mental lexicon in general and the L2 mental lexicon in particular.

Notes
1. This experiment was based on the authors MA thesis (Fu, 2008), and some of the findings have been published in her article (Fu et al., 2009). 2. The Edinburgh Associative Thesaurus (EAT) is a set of WA norms showing the counts of WA as collected from 100 native speakers of English. An interactive version and a downloadable version of the WA thesaurus are available over the Internet at <http://www.eat.rl.ac.uk>.

References
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Fu, Y. P. 2008. [An exploration into the developmental pattern of second language mental lexicon: A longitudinal study] (MA Thesis). Liaocheng University, Shandong. Fu, Y. P., et al. 2009. [A longitudinal study of the developmental pattern of SL mental lexicon]. Foreign Language and Literature Studies, 26 (1), 16-23. Gui, S. C. & Li, W. 1992. [The mental lexicon studies of Chinese learners of English]. In S. C. Gui (ed.), The psychology of Chinese learners of English, 24-37. Changsha: Hunan Education Press. Harley, B. 1995. Introduction: The lexicon in second language research. In B. Harley (ed.), Lexical Issues in Language Learning, 1-31. New York: John Benjamins. Higher Education Institutions, Ministry of Education of the PRC. 2007. [College English Curriculum Requirements]. Beijing: Qinghua University Press. Kiss, G. R., Armstrong, C., Milroy, R. & Piper, J. 1973. An associative thesaurus of English and its computer analysis. In A. J. Aitken, R. W. Bailey & N. Hamilton-Smith (eds.), The Computer and Literary Studies, 153-165. Edinburgh: University Press. Kruse, H., James, P. & Smith, M. 1987. A multiple word association probe in second language acquisition research. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9, 141-154. Laufer, B. 1997. The lexical plight in second language reading: Words you dont know, words you think you know, and words you cant guess. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition, 20-34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Li, G. Y. 1999. [A New English Course, Students Book 3] (2nd ed.). Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Press. Li, H. 2004. [Semantic processing: The L2 lexical competence perspective] (PhD. Dissertation). Guangzhou: Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Meara, P. 1983. Word association in a foreign language: A report on the Birkbeck Vocabulary Project. Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 11, 29-37. Ministry of Education of the PRC. 2001. [English Curriculum Criteria for Regular Middle Schools]. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press. Namei, S. 2004. Bilingual lexical development: A Persian-Swedish word association study. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14, 363-388. Nation, I. S. P. 1990. Teaching and Learning Vocabulary. New York: Newbury House. Nation, I. S. P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. OGorman, E. 1996. An investigation of the mental lexicon of second language learners. Teanga: The Irish Year Book of Applied Linguistics, 16, 15-31. Postman, L. 1970. The California norms: Associations as a function of word frequency. In L. Postman & G. Keppel (eds.), Norms of word association, 241-320. New York: Academic Press. Richards, J. C., Platt, J. & Platt, H. 2000. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. Ruke-Dravina, V. 1971. Word associations in monolingual and multilingual individuals. Linguistics, 74, 66-85.
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Schmitt, N. 1998a. Quantifying word association responses: What is native-like? System, 26, 389401. Schmitt, N. 1998b. Tracking the incremental acquisition of second language vocabulary: A longitudinal study. Language Learning, 48, 281-317. Schmitt, N. & Meara, P. 1997. Researching vocabulary through a word knowledge framework: Word associations and verbal suffixes. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 17-36. Singleton, D. 1999. Exploring the Second Language Mental Lexicon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sderman, T. 1993. Word associations of foreign language learners and native speakers: The phenomenon of a shift in response type and its relevance to lexical development. In H. Ringbom (ed.), Near-native Proficiency in English, 91-182. Abo: Abo Akademi, English Department Publications. Stolz, W. S. & Tiffany, J. 1972. The production of child-like word associations by adults to unfamiliar adjectives. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 38-46. Wolter, B. 2001. Comparing the L1 and L2 mental lexicon: a depth of individual word knowledge model. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23, 41-69. Wolter, B. 2006. Lexical network structures and L2 vocabulary acquisition: The role of L1 lexical/ conceptual knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 27, 741-747. Wu, Z. X. & Li, X. 2002. [A Vocabulary Builder for TEM Band-4]. Shanghai: World Publishing Company. Yang, Y. M. et al. 2001. [An overview of the research abroad on mental lexicon]. Contemporary Linguistics, 2, 90-108. Zhang, S. J. 2004. [The CLE Mental Lexicon: Nature and Developmental Pattern]. Zhengzhou: Henan University Press.

Appendix 1 Stimulus word list used in Experiment 1

music, deep, mountain, comfort, hand, fruit, butterfly, wish, river, beautiful, window, citizen, foot, red, sleep, anger, carpet, working, earth, bread, city, bed, trouble, soldier, cabbage, yellow, justice, health, memory, sheep, dream, head, ocean, child, doctor, thief, lion, joy, baby, moon, quiet, cheese, afraid, thirsty, sweet.

Appendix 2 Stimulus word list used in Experiment 2

swan, screech, blare, ruby, legacy, lobby, breach, tunnel, verse, stripe, complexion, awe, ferry, shudder, grace, predict, shrew, conviction, hitch, grunge, inaugurate, supposition, jumpsuit, estate, moat, thriving, parallel, chic, bundle, inspire, psyche, beet, reverie, literary, baptize, scramble, scheme, parish, confirm, baggy.

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Appendix 3 Top Three responses to the high-frequency stimulus words in Experiment 1

Stimulus word Afraid Anger Baby Beautiful Bed Bread Butterfly Cabbage Carpet Cheese Child Citizen City Comfort Deep Doctor Dream Earth Foot Fruit Hand Head Health Joy Justice Lion Memory Moon Mountain Music Ocean Quiet vegetable 19 floor 7 bread 9, milk 7 adult 8 city 36, people 28, country 9 country 52, town 16 happy 8 high 9 patient 38, nurse 23 sleep 24 moon 35, mother 5 hand 68 apple 75 foot 63, leg 10, finger 8 hair 40, hand 9 sport 8 happy 37, fun 6 fair 17 tiger 49, king 9 forget 18, remember 16 sun 55, earth 10 hill 31, tree 15 song 11 sea 39, water 13 noise 14, noisy 13 afraid 10 good 18 moon-cake 9 High 50 Dance 15, popular 6 blue 27 quite 15 clever 7 good 14 healthy 25 enjoy 23 just 43, drink 5 big 8 home 7 Water 18, sea 13 ill 8 true 13, good 7 round 10 walk 22 eat 21, delicious 7 feet 17 comfortable 43 lovely 32 milk 39, breakfast 8 Semantic response Paradigmatic response brave 7, worried 6 happy 34, smile 6 mother 11 ugly 19 lovely 33, beautiful 10 girl 45, flower 15 sleep 82, comfortable 15 eat 17 beautiful 50 eat 11 red 7 fly 34, butter 9 bag 11 car 31 choose 21 children 31 bad 8 Syntagmatic response dark 9 angry 23 Non-semantic response

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Semantic response Paradigmatic response green 29, blue 25, yellow 13 water 40, fish 18, sea 16 cow 13 wake 11 army 17, war 12 salt 5 police 27, policeman 11 hungry 25 difficult 14 door 63 hope 87, dream 10 job 17 blue 17, red 17, color 9 white 15 bed 43 brave 13 candy 25, sugar 25 bad 12 water 81, drink 11 solve 10, bad 5 open 14 good 6 hard 50, tired 16 wind 7 sleep 15 sheep 14 Syntagmatic response

Stimulus word Red River Sheep Sleep Soldier sweet Thief Thirsty Trouble Window Wish Working Yellow

Non-semantic response

Appendix 4 Top three responses to the low-frequency stimulus words in Experiment 2

Stimulus word awe baggy baptize beet blare breach bundle chic complexion confirm conviction estate ferry grace grunge bunch 17 fashion 12 face 23, skin 23 sure 32, prove 11 sure 17 legacy 12, land 9 boat 15 beautiful 10 lady 7 foot 23 flower 12 Semantic response Paradigmatic response respect 56 loose 12 religion 6 vegetable 20 light 10, noise 9 field 17 clothes 16 Syntagmatic response Non-semantic response awful 12, owe 8 bag 43 born 11, size 9 beet 19 glare 52 break 17, reach 17, beach 11 bound 5 chicken 15, chip 10 complex 18 firm 7 convict 18, convince 16 east 8 worry 9, afraid 7 graceful 16 ground 8, orange 5

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Semantic response Paradigmatic response connect 13 ceremony 17, begin 8 encourage 36 clothes 40 estate 22 book 18, works 12 hall 25, hotel 8 river 28 equal 7, unparallel 4 line 61 punish 25, paris 7, rich 5 foresee 9 mind 27, physical 24 dream 15, daydream 14 red 29, diamond 9 plan 38, schedule 19 climb 23, crawl 11 sound 16, scream 13 woman 10 tremble 16, shake 10 line 17, star 11 guess 30, imagination 5 animal 16, bird 12 prosperous 40 channel 66, chunnel 26 poem 26, poet 8 swim 33 thrive 13, exciting 7 road 20 very 6 body 17 strike 7 suppose 40 future 16 prediction 6 heart 22 review 13 rude 6 time 15 scram 9 reach 10 shower 29, throw 24 Syntagmatic response hike 28

Stimulus word hitch inaugurate inspire jumpsuit legacy literary lobby moat parallel parish predict psyche reverie ruby scheme scramble screech shrew shudder stripe supposition swan thriving tunnel verse

Non-semantic response catch 9 graduate 9 courage 10, inspiration 9 jump 20, suit 8 leg 19, legal 16 literature 7 hobby 20 meat 13, coat 10

(Copy editing: DING Yanren)

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