Event-related potentials (ERPs) served to investigate whether phonological representations from both the first (L1) and second (L2) language of bilinguals are activated during silent reading of L2 words. French-English late bilinguals and control monolingual English speakers read interlingual homophones (e.g., "knee" in English, which has substantial phonological overlap with the French word "nid," meaning "nest") and matched control words. Results showed a reduction in N400 amplitude in response to interlingual homophones in comparison to control words for bilinguals, but not for English monolinguals. The reduced N400 response to homophones in bilinguals suggests facilitation of word recognition. These results suggest parallel activation of both L1 and L2 phonological representations when reading silently in the L2. These findings point to a language nonspecific model for bilinguals at the phonological level of representation.

The present study examined the processing of grammatical gender in second language (L2) French as a function of language background (Experiment 1) and as a function of overt phonetic properties of agreement (Experiment 2) by examining Event Related Potential (ERP) responses to gender discord in L2 French. In Experiment 1 we explored the role of the presence/absence of abstract grammatical gender in the L1 (gendered German, ungendered English): we compared German and English learners of French when processing postnominal plural (no gender cues on determiner) attributive adjectives that either agreed in gender with the noun or presented a gender violation. We found grammaticalized responses (P600) by native and L1 English learners, but no response by German L1, a result we attribute to the possible influence of plurality, which is gender neutralized in German DP concord. In Experiment 2, we examined the role of overt phonetic cues to noun-adjective gender agreement in French, for both native speakers and Spanish L2 learners of French, finding that both natives and L2 learners showed a more robust P600 in the presence of phonetic cues. These data, in conjunction with those of other ERP studies can best be accounted for by a model that allows for native language influence, that is not, however constrained by age of acquisition, and that must also allow for clear cues in the input to influence acquisition and/or processing.

Objectives/Research Questions: This study investigates whether bilinguals activate lexical knowledge from both their dominant first language (L1; Spanish) and their less-dominant second language (L2; English) during novel third language (L3; Slovak) word learning. Moreover, it examines the extent to which L2 activation in L3 lexical learning depends on the level of L2 proficiency. Methodology: Stimuli included 120 auditory Slovak words with substantial phonological overlap with either English or Spanish (homophones) or with neither language (control words), and their written Spanish translations. Two groups of participants (with high and low-proficiency in L2 English) completed paired-associate learning, correct/incorrect translation recognition and backward translation tasks on Slovak–Spanish translation equivalents to examine the facilitation effect of homophones with either Spanish or English. Data and Analysis: Response times, accuracy scores and correct translation counts were collected from 35 Spanish–English bilinguals and analyzed by means of repeated measures analyses of variance. Findings/Conclusions: The phonological similarity of novel L3 words with participants’ L2 words showed similar facilitation effects as phonological similarity with L1 words. This implies an involuntary activation of bilinguals’ less-dominant L2, even when not overtly present in the L3 lexical learning task. Moreover, the low-proficiency group experienced a higher facilitation for L1 than for L2 homophones, but overall lower facilitation in L3 lexical learning than the high-proficiency group. These findings suggest that bilinguals can activate lexical knowledge from both of their languages during novel L3 word learning, but the activation of the less-dominant L2 depends on participants’ L2 proficiency. Originality: We investigated how Spanish–English bilinguals incorporate vocabulary from an understudied language (i.e. Slovak) into their lexical system to test the language non-selective hypothesis in a multilingual lexical context. Significance: Our research contributes to the study of the degree of language dominance and its implications for L3 lexical learning and parallel activation of multilinguals’ languages.

International audienceThe present study investigated effects of phonological and orthographic neighborhood density on event-related potentials, with an aim to better specify the factors that determine N400 amplitude in single word reading paradigms. We orthogonally manipulated the number of orthographic and phonological neighbors of words using the Levenshtein Distance metric (OLD20 and PLD20, respectively). The results showed opposite effects of phonological neighborhood density (PND) as a function of orthographic neighborhood density (OND). Larger N400 amplitudes were elicited by words with high PND compared with low PND when OND was high, and smaller N400 amplitudes were observed with high PND compared with low PND words when OND was low. We interpret these findings using the notion of cross-code consistency, according to which the compatibility of orthographic and phonological representations activated by a given word influences the process of recognizing that word. Words with similar numbers of orthographic and phonological neighbors have more consistent spellings and pronunciations across the neighborhood, and generate larger N400 amplitudes. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd