Concepts Are Restructured During Language Contact: The Birth of Blue and Other Color Concepts in Tsimane’-Spanish Bilinguals
Saima Malik-Moraleda, Kyle Mahowald, Bevil R. Conway, Edward Gibson
Psychological Science · 2023 · Volume 34 · Issue 12
DOI: 10.1177/09567976231199742
Abstract
Words and the concepts they represent vary across languages. Here we ask if mother-tongue concepts are altered by learning a second language. What happens when speakers of Tsimane’, a language with few consensus color terms, learn Bolivian Spanish, a language with more terms? Three possibilities arise: Concepts in Tsimane’ may remain unaffected, or they may be remapped, either by Tsimane’ terms taking on new meanings or by borrowing Bolivian-Spanish terms. We found that adult bilingual speakers ( n = 30) remapped Tsimane’ concepts without importing Bolivian-Spanish terms into Tsimane’. All Tsimane’ terms become more precise; for example, concepts of monolingual shandyes and yụshñus (~green or blue, used synonymously by Tsimane’ monolinguals; n = 71) come to reflect the Bolivian-Spanish distinction of verde (~green) and azul (~blue). These results show that learning a second language can change the concepts in the first language.
Keywords
bilingualism, conceptual representation, language change, open data, open materials
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