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Second Language Learners’ Performance On Non-Isomorphic Cross-Language Cognates In Translation, Carlos I. Canizares

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Do adult L2 English bilingual speakers have difficulty with cognate words whose meanings are distinct across their two languages? This study explored the extent to which variations in meaning in cross-language cognates affect translation performance in a translation task by L2 English (L1 Spanish) speakers who learned English as adults. A prep-phase experiment was conducted to test native English-speakers’ predicted completions of the study’s stimuli sentences, in order to choose the optimal stimuli for the primary experiment. The method for the primary experiment of this study consisted of a web-based translation task of 120 sentences from Spanish to English, while …