Depth and Breadth of Vocabulary in Two Languages: Which Vocabulary Skills Transfer? Claudia Lucı ´a Ordo ´n ˜ez Universidad de los Andes Marı ´a S. Carlo and Catherine E. Snow Harvard Graduate School of Education Barry McLaughlin University of California, Santa Cruz In this study, the authors examined the relationship between paradigmatic and syntagmatic word knowledge. The authors used familiar concrete nouns administered in Spanish and English to 88 bilingual 4th and 5th graders. Students were tested on the ability to provide superordinates, communicatively adequate definitions, and rich object descriptions. Producing superordinates in Spanish was a reliable predictor of the same skill in English, while controlling for breadth of vocabulary knowledge in each language. The relationship between communicative skills in Spanish and English was evident only when English and Spanish breadth of vocabulary knowledge were controlled. Communicative adequacy of definitions and rich descriptions of concrete nouns depended more on specific vocabulary knowledge in English than on transfer. Perhaps the most serious challenge facing any second-language (L2) learner is that of vocabulary acquisition—acquiring in a short time sufficient knowledge about the many thousands of different words that will be encountered in written texts, for example. The conditions of L2 learning that best lead to a large vocabulary have been described (see Huckin, Haynes, & Coady, 1993). In addition, L2 learners can sometimes use their knowledge of their first language (L1) to ease the task of L2 vocabulary acquisition. Understanding and promoting L2 vocabulary acquisition requires more knowledge, though, about the potential types or sites of transfer from L1. Aspects of Lexical Knowledge Although lexical knowledge is most commonly thought of and assessed as number of words known, or breadth of vocabulary, it is now increasingly clear that richness of the representation of the words known is also a key dimension of variability. We refer to this dimension as depth of vocabulary (Wesche & Paribakht, 1996). Depth of vocabulary knowledge itself has several dimen- sions, related to the various components of any lexical represen- tation. These include (a) quality of the representation of the pho- nology of the word in question, which in turn is often related to its orthographic representation (Snow & Locke, 2001); (b) knowledge of the array of syntactic structures into which the word enters, its word class(es), and its possibilities for collocation; (c) knowledge of the word’s morphological structure and its susceptibility to derivational processes; (d) richness of the semantic representation of the word, including information about its core meaning, its connotations, its potential for polysemy; and (e) knowledge of the pragmatic rules for using the word, including its sociolinguistic register, its degree of formality, and its appropriateness to various contexts. L2 learners have been shown to have restricted depth of knowl- edge for all dimensions studied so far. Feldman and Healy (1998) found that L2 words whose phonological representations differed from the sound patterns of the native language were harder to acquire. L2 speakers are less clear about syntactic class of the words they know than are L1 speakers, who respond with same- class (paradigmatic) responses in word association tasks (e.g., sit-stand), whereas L2 speakers often produce syntagmatic re- sponses (e.g., sit-chair; Meara, 1982; So ¨derman, 1993). Hancin- Bhatt and Nagy (1994) found that there was developmental vari- ation in Spanish-speaking English language learners’ capacity to analyze the morphological structure of English target words, even words directly isomorphic with Spanish. Verhallen and Schoonen (1993, 1998) demonstrated in a series of studies that L2 speakers of Dutch have less rich semantic representations even of very simple words than do native monolinguals. We do not know, though, how these various aspects of depth in L2 vocabulary are related to L1 skills and thus whether they are subject to cross- linguistic transfer. Transfer Cummins (1979) hypothesized that metalinguistic and academ- ically mediated language skills transfer across languages, whereas communicative skills must be reacquired anew in a second lan- Claudia Lucı ´a Ordo ´n ˜ez, Departamento de Educacio ´n, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota ´, Colombia; Marı ´a S. Carlo and Catherine E. Snow, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Barry McLaughlin, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marı ´a S. Carlo, who is now at the School of Education, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248256, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-3310. E-mail: carlo@miami.edu Journal of Educational Psychology Copyright 2002 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 2002, Vol. 94, No. 4, 719 –728 0022-0663/02/$5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0022-0663.94.4.719 719 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.