Cross-lingual word embeddings and the structure of the human bilingual lexicon

Abstract

Research on the bilingual lexicon has uncovered fascinating interactions between the lexicons of the native language and of the second language in bilingual speakers. In particular, it has been found that the lexicon of the underlying native language affects the organisation of the second language. In the spirit of interpreting current distributed representations, this paper investigates two models of cross-lingual word embeddings, comparing them to the shared-translation effect and the cross-lingual coactivation effects of false and true friends (cognates) found in humans. We find that the similarity structure of the cross-lingual word embeddings space yields the same effects as the human bilingual lexicon.