Spoken Words Activate Cross-Linguistic Orthographic Competitors in the Absence of Phonological Overlap (original) (raw)
Related papers
Second languages (L2s) are often learned through spoken and written input, and L2 orthographic forms (spellings) can lead to non-native-like pronunciation. The present study investigated whether orthography can lead experienced learners of EnglishL2 to make a phonological contrast in their speech production that does not exist in English. Double consonants represent geminate (long) consonants in Italian but not in English. In Experiment 1, native English speakers and EnglishL2 speakers (Italians) were asked to read aloud English words spelled with a single or double target consonant letter, and consonant duration was compared. The EnglishL2 speakers produced the same consonant as shorter when it was spelled with a single letter, and longer when spelled with a double letter. Spelling did not affect consonant duration in native English speakers. In Experiment 2, effects of orthographic input were investigated by comparing two groups of EnglishL2 speakers (Italians) performing a delayed word repetition task with or without orthographic input; the same orthographic effects were found in both groups. These results provide arguably the first evidence that L2 orthographic forms can lead experienced L2 speakers to make a contrast in their L2 production that does not exist in the language. The effect arises because L2 speakers are affected by the interaction between the L2 orthographic form (number of letters), and their native orthography–phonology mappings, whereby double consonant letters represent geminate consonants. These results have important implications for future studies investigating the effects of orthography on native phonology and for L2 phonological development models.
Orthographic activation in spoken word recognition of L2 phonological variants
Second Language Research, 2020
The present study investigated the influence of orthographic input on the recognition of second language (L2) spoken words with phonological variants, when first language (L1) and L2 have different orthographic structures. Lexical encoding for intermediate-to-advanced level Mandarin learners of Korean was assessed using masked cross-modal and within-modal priming tasks. Given that Korean has obstruent nasalization in the syllable coda, prime target pairs were created with and without such phonological variants, but spellings that were provided in the cross-modal task reflected their unaltered, nonnasalized forms. The results indicate that when L2 learners are exposed to transparent alphabetic orthography, they do not show a particular cost for spoken word recognition of L2 phonological variants as long as the variation is regular and rule-governed.
L1 English / L2 Spanish: Orthography–phonology activation without contrasts
Second Language Research, 2017
We consider how orthography activates sounds that are in a noncontrastive relationship in the second language (L2) and for which only one variant exists in the first language (L1). Participants were L1 English / L2 Spanish and native Spanish listeners. Intervocalically, Spanish graphemes ‘b d g’ correspond phonetically to stops and approximants (e.g. lobo ‘wolf’, lo[β]o), and in English they correspond only to stops. In Experiment 1, native and L2 Spanish listeners completed cross-modal (written–auditory) and within modal (auditory) priming tasks. Prime-target pairs were counterbalanced for phonetic variant. The results for L2 listeners in the cross-modal condition showed a significant interaction between variant and mode. Experiment 2 used long-term repetition priming to tap into longer-term representations and test whether L1 orthography is activated even when it is not strictly necessary to complete the task. Results for L2 speakers showed priming by both phonetic variants while ...
Spoken L2 words activate L1 orthographic information in late L2 learners
2018
This study investigated the time-course of activation of orthographic information in spoken word recognition with two visual world eye-tracking experiments in a task where L2 spoken word forms had to be matched with their printed referents. Participants (n = 64) were L1 Finnish learners of L2 French ranging from beginners to highly proficient. In Exp. 1, L2 targets (e.g. /sidʀ/) were presented with either orthographically overlapping onset competitors (e.g. /sɛt̃ ʀ/) or phonologically overlapping onset competitors ( /sikl/). In Exp. 2, L2 targets (e.g., /pom/) were associated with L1 competitors in conditions symmetric to Exp. 1 ( /pauhu/ vs. /pom:i/). In the within-language experiment (Exp. 1), the difference in target identification between the experimental conditions was not significant. In the between-language experiment (Exp. 2), orthographic information impacted the mapping more in lower proficiency learners, and this effect was observed 600ms after the target word onset. The influence of proficiency on the matching was non-linear: proficiency impacted the mapping significantly more in the lower half of the proficiency scale in both experiments. These results are discussed in terms of co-activation of orthographic and phonological information in L2 spoken word recognition.
Reading words in Spanish and English: Mapping orthography to phonology in two languages
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2007
English-Spanish bilinguals named visually presented words aloud in each language. The words included cognates (e.g., fruit-fruta) and non-cognate translations (e.g., pencil-ládpiz). The cognates were selected so that the orthographic and phonological similarity of their lexical form in each language varied orthogonally. Cognate naming latencies were influenced by the crosslanguage match of the orthographic and phonological codes. When the orthographic forms were similar in the two languages, naming latencies were slowed by dissimilar phonology, providing evidence for feed-forward activation from orthography to phonology across languages. When the orthographic forms were dissimilar, the effects of the corresponding phonological match were not statistically reliable. The results suggest that lexical access is non-selective across bilinguals' two languages, and that the degree of consistency between orthographic and phonological codes influences the manner in which crosslanguage competition is manifest. Findings are discussed in terms of feedforward and feed-backward activation dynamics across languages.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2021
Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.
Language and speech, 2018
Research shows that the orthographic forms ("spellings") of second language (L2) words affect speech production in L2 speakers. This study investigated whether English orthographic forms lead L2 speakers to produce English homophonic word pairs as phonological minimal pairs. Targets were 33 orthographic minimal pairs, that is to say homophonic words that would be pronounced as phonological minimal pairs if orthography affects pronunciation. Word pairs contained the same target sound spelled with one letter or two, such as the /n/ in finish and Finnish (both /'fɪnɪʃ/ in Standard British English). To test for effects of length and type of L2 exposure, we compared Italian instructed learners of English, Italian-English late bilinguals with lengthy naturalistic exposure, and English natives. A reading-aloud task revealed that Italian speakers of English produce two English homophonic words as a minimal pair distinguished by different consonant or vowel length, for instance...
Learning words in a new language: Orthography doesn't always help
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2013
Previous studies have shown that orthography is activated during speech processing and that it may have positive and negative effects for non-native listeners. The present study examines whether the effect of orthography on non-native word learning depends on the relationship between the grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the native and non-native orthographic systems. Specifically, congruence between grapheme–phoneme correspondences across the listeners’ languages is predicted to aid word recognition, while incongruence is predicted to hinder it. Native Spanish listeners who were Dutch learners or naïve listeners (with no exposure to Dutch) were taught Dutch pseudowords and their visual referents. They were trained with only auditory forms or with auditory and orthographic forms. During testing, non-native listeners were less accurate when the target and distractor pseudowords formed a minimal pair (differing in only one vowel) than when they formed a non-minimal pair, and performed better on perceptually easy than on perceptually difficult minimal pairs. For perceptually difficult minimal pairs, Dutch learners performed better than naïve listeners and Dutch proficiency predicted learners’ word recognition accuracy. Most importantly and as predicted, exposure to orthographic forms during training aided performance on minimal pairs with congruent orthography, while it hindered performance on minimal pairs with incongruent orthography.
Applied Psycholinguistics, 2022
The orthographic forms (spellings) of second language (L2) words and sounds affect the pronunciation and awareness of L2 sounds, even after lengthy naturalistic exposure. This study investigated whether instruction could reduce the effects of English orthographic forms on Italian native speakers’ pronunciation and awareness of L2 English sounds. Italians perceive, produce, and judge the same sound as a short sound if it is spelled with one letter and as a long sound if it is spelled with a digraph, due to L1 Italian grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) rules whereby double consonant letters represent long consonants. Totally, 100 Italian learners of English were allocated to two conditions (final n = 88). The participants in the explicit GPC (EGPC) condition discovered English GPC rules relating to sound length through reflection, explicit teaching, and practice; the participants in the passive exposure condition practiced the same words as the EGPC participants, but with no mentio...