Comparative Study of Lexical Availability in a Bilingual Context: English-Dominant versus Spanish Heritage Speakers

Abstract

Lexical availability (LA) refers to the subset of the mental lexicon that speakers readily activate in response to specific thematic prompts. It reflects the accessibility of lexical knowledge and is commonly characterized by the degree of lexical consensus observed across members of a speech community. This study investigates comparative intra-individual LA in speakers with English as the dominant language (DL) and Spanish as a heritage language (HL), addressing a gap in cross-language, within-subject research. A convenience sample of 31 undergraduate students at a university in California, USA, completed a free-association LA test in both English and Spanish according to the Pan-Hispanic Lexical Availability Project. Responses were lemmatized and processed with Dispogen; analyses examined size, consensus, core versus peripheral composition, and patterns of thematic contamination across domains (e.g., professions, city). Across most domains, the DL (English) exhibited a broader, more consensual lexical core, while the HL (Spanish) retained a longer low-frequency tail containing items that appear culturally specific, toponyms, and identity-linked references. Analyses also revealed systematic thematic contamination between languages and clear differences in the makeup of core versus peripheral lexica. Findings suggest that English-dominant, Spanish-heritage speakers maintain distinct distributions of high-consensus (core) and low-frequency (peripheral) vocabulary across languages. These patterns have direct pedagogical implications: empirical guidance from LA profiles can inform targeted interventions that combine heritage-language maintenance with focused instruction in formal and academic registers, and help shape institutional policies supporting bilingual education.