A Self-Organizing Connectionist Model of Bilingual Lexical Development

How do bilingual learners acquire a structured representation for the two lexicons at early stages of lexical acquisition? In this study, we attempt to address this question with Devlex-II, a self-organizing connectionist model. Previous connectionist simulations suggest that bilingual lexical representations may be functionally separate, but architecturally homogeneous (Li & Farkas, 2002). Here, we expand this single-mechanismvariable-representation view from a dynamical developmental perspective. Results from our study will provide insights into the long-standing debate on distinct versus shared structure of bilingual lexical representation.