Lexicon - Second Language Lexicon

Second Language Lexicon

The term lexicon is generally used in the context of single language. Therefore, multi-lingual speakers are generally thought to have multiple lexicons. Speakers of language variants (Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese, for example) may be considered to possess a single lexicon. Thus a cash dispenser (British English) as well as and automatic teller machine or ATM in (American English) while belonging to speakers of different dialect would be understood by both American and British dialect speakers.

When linguists study the lexicon, they consider such things as what constitutes a word; the word-concept relationship; lexical access and lexical access failure; how a word's phonology, syntax, and meaning intersect; the morphology-word relationship; vocabulary structure within a given language; language use (that is, pragmatics); language acquisition; the history and evolution of words (i.e. etymology); and the relationships between words, often studied within philosophy of language.

In psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and computational linguistics, researchers have proposed various models of how the lexicon is organized and how words are retrieved.