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Concepts Are Restructured During Language Contact: The Birth of Blue and Other Color Concepts in Tsimane’-Spanish Bilinguals

Saima Malik-Moraleda^1,2,3; Kyle Mahowald⁴; Bevil R. Conway⁵; Edward Gibson¹

¹ Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology · ² McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology · ³ Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology, Harvard University · ⁴ Department of Linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin · ⁵ Laboratory of Sensorimotor Research, National Eye Institute and National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD

Words and the concepts they represent vary across languages. Here we ask if mother-tongue concepts are altered by learning a second language. What happens when speakers of Tsimane’, a language with few consensus color terms, learn Bolivian Spanish, a language with more terms? Three possibilities arise: Concepts in Tsimane’ may remain unaffected, or they may be remapped, either by Tsimane’ terms taking on new meanings or by borrowing Bolivian-Spanish terms. We found that adult bilingual speakers ( n = 30) remapped Tsimane’ concepts without importing Bolivian-Spanish terms into Tsimane’. All Tsimane’ terms become more precise; for example, concepts of monolingual shandyes and yụshñus (~green or blue, used synonymously by Tsimane’ monolinguals; n = 71) come to reflect the Bolivian-Spanish distinction of verde (~green) and azul (~blue). These results show that learning a second language can change the concepts in the first language.

DOI

10.1177/09567976231199742

Volume

34 (12)

Pages

1350-1362

Language

en

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