Word Associations in a Minoritised Language: The Case of Cymraeg (Welsh)

ABSTRACT As with many research strands in linguistics, word association (WA) literature is dominated by English language data. This paper (i) explores the extent to which methodologies developed to date are applicable to other languages—specifically, Welsh (Cymraeg)—and (ii) investigates what WA analysis can reveal about lexical organisation and retrieval in bilinguals’ two languages; its minoritised language context means that Welsh speakers are bilingual with English. Two complementary datasets are used. The first comprises responses to 900 Welsh cues from 85 expert users of Welsh, and forms the basis of the first Welsh language WA norms list. The second is bilingual, comprising responses from 85 Welsh speakers and learners to two lists of 100 cue words, one in Welsh and one in English. Language‐specific methodological challenges emerge, including management of mutated word forms, diacritics, and orthographic variation. Decisions relating to these, as the first dataset was converted into a norms list (now informing Welsh language teaching materials), are documented. Language‐specific features that facilitate understanding of WA processes, such as grammatical mutation and inflection, are also reported. Bilingual data associations were categorised to obtain ‘profiles’ for each dataset. Systematic differences between the profiles for each task (Welsh and English) were identified. A pairwise comparison of profiles revealed that while individuals' profiles are distinct from each other, their own profiles are similar across each of their two languages; this closeness is most pronounced in expert users of Welsh.