The network as a process. On the role of the speaker in the construction of semantic networks in Spanish L1 and L2

This paper proposes an approach to the mental lexicon in Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) based on the analysis of the semantic network of the Clothing category, generated from the responses of 75 SFL learners from the United States with an intermediate level of Spanish, in contrast to that which supports the lexical production of 75 university native Spanish speakers. Along with a structural analysis of the generated semantic networks, innovative measures are incorporated that also address the speakers’ behavior, that is, how native and non-native speakers access and navigate the network. Thus, it is found that semantic networks in L1 and L2 differ not only in their structure and organization (Ferreira & Echeverría, 2010; Borodkin et al., 2016; Gómez Devís & Llopis Rodrigo, 2016), but also in their configuration and navigation processes.