Effects of cognate status, noun type, frequency, and bilingual profile on the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon in Norwegian-English bilinguals

Abstract

This experimental thesis aimed to investigate the effects of cognate status, frequency, and noun type on the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon in Norwegian-English bilinguals, and how their performance in these conditions relates to individual differences in their bilingual profile such as second language(L2)English proficiency. A bilingual profile was created for each participant based on their answers on an amended version of the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (Marian, Blumenfeld & Kaushauskaya, 2007). The experimental part of this study included a TOT experiment in two parts: one English and one Norwegian. For both experiments, stimuli consisted of definitions corresponding to a target word of either low or high frequency belonging to one of the following four conditions: cognate common nouns, cognate proper nouns, non-cognate common nouns, or non-cognate proper nouns. At testing, 49 participants were presented with these definitions and asked whether they knew the word, didn’t know the word, or if they fell into a TOT state. An analysis of the combined data showed that, as expected, participants experienced more TOTs in their second language (L2) English, relative to their first language (L1)Norwegian, and for low-frequency words relative to high-frequency words.