ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some evidence concerning the relations between lexical and conceptual memory in the second language learner and the more fluent bilingual. A central issue in theories of bilingual language representation concerns the mapping of form to meaning. Linguists and psycholinguists often distinguish two levels of meaning. One level consists of the semantic specifications that are taken to be part of the lexical representation. The other level represents the conceptual information that includes real world knowledge and the meanings of the objects and events to which words refer. A great deal of research on picture naming suggests that it is accomplished via concept mediation; lexical entries for the names of pictures only appear to be available subsequent to conceptual access. An alternative approach to modeling the representation of words and concepts in bilingual memory is to focus on those aspects of words that appear to be associated with lexical or conceptual processing.
