Trilingual Mental Lexicon: Investigating Lexical Organisation and Access in Punjabi-Urdu-English Participants

Abstract

This study explores the trilingual mental lexicon through three key experimental tasks: the picture-naming experiment, the Stroop experiment, and the translation-elicitation experiment. The study participants were twelve trilingual undergraduates proficient in Punjabi, Urdu, and English. Experiment 1 consisted of the picture-naming task, which measured participants' ability to retrieve and produce words in the L3 (English). Experiment 2 involved the Stroop task, which sequentially assessed cognitive control and interference across all participants' L3, L2, and L1 languages. Finally, experiment 3 comprised the translation-elicitation task, which examined participants' lexical retrieval in sentential context from L2-L3 and L3-L2 in both single language task and integrated language tasks. Results indicated significant interactions between the languages in the participants' mental lexicons, with notable variations in lexical retrieval and accuracy across the tasks. The article provides insights into the organisation and access of trilingual mental lexicon, particularly Punjabi-Urdu-English trilinguals.