Early activation of cross-language meaning from phonology during sentence processing.

Abstract

The current study investigated whether shared phonology across languages activates cross-language meaning when reading in context. Eighty-five bilinguals read English sentences while their eye movements were tracked. Critical sentences contained English members of English-French interlingual homophone pairs (e.g., mow; French homophone mate mot means "word") or they contained spelling control words (e.g., mop). Only the meaning of the unseen French homophone mate fit the context (e.g., Hannah wrote another mow/mop on the blackboard for the spelling test). Differences in fixation durations between homophone errors and spelling control errors provided evidence for cross-language activation that extended to semantic representations. When the unseen French homophone was of high frequency, shorter first fixations and gaze durations were observed on English interlingual homophones than on English control words, providing evidence that the French meaning associated with the shared phonology was activated during early stage word identification. Individual differences analyses showed that these effects were larger when bilinguals were using the nontarget language (i.e., French) more regularly in daily life. Results provide evidence that cross-language activation of phonology can be sufficiently strong to activate corresponding semantic representations during single language sentence processing.

Automatic phonological access among bilinguals with cross-script languages

“…This finding suggests that even when the reading context is highly constrained in one language, readers would still be able to activate phonology across languages. However, the shared phonology between English and Chinese interfered with rather than facilitated the activation of meaning in processing English sentences, inconsistent with the facilitation effect observed in the critical words in English-French bilinguals (Friesen, Ward, et al, 2020;Friesen, Whitford, et al, 2020). Notably, we used cross-script languages Chinese and English while Friesen, Whitford, et al (2020) used same-script languages English and French.…”

“…To examine whether participants read sentences carefully, participants were asked to answer a comprehension question in 64 (78.05%) of the sentences, where half should be answered with “yes,” and the other half with “no.” For example, after the sentence “Abby experienced tone for a long time after she had back surgery,” the question was “Did Abby have a surgery on her back?” Note that among our comprehension questions, 18 out of 64 (28.13%) targeted the part of the sentence that included the homophone error or control error words, and 46 out of 64 (71.88%) did not. The purpose of including more comprehension questions that did not target the part of the sentences containing the homophone error or control error words is to ensure that our participants could answer the questions regardless of the error words (see also Friesen, Ward, et al, 2020).…”

“…Note that among our comprehension questions, 18 out of 64 (28.13%) targeted the part of the sentence that included the homophone error or control error words, and 46 out of 64 (71.88%) did not. The purpose of including more comprehension questions that did not target the part of the sentences containing the homophone error or control error words is to ensure that our participants could answer the questions regardless of the error words (see also Friesen, Ward, et al, 2020). Filler sentences selection.…”

Activation of ASL signs during sentence reading for deaf readers: evidence from eye-tracking

“…Eye-tracking studies with French-English bilinguals offer additional support for early activation of words in the non-target (inactive) language during reading (Friesen et al, 2020a(Friesen et al, , 2020bFriesen & Jared, 2012). Using a French-English homophone error paradigm, Friesen et al (2020a) found that readers were sensitive to phonological similarity across languages (i.e., the homophones "mow" and "mot"), with homophone effects observed in early eye-tracking measures. Similarly, Friesen et al (2020b) demonstrated that readers exhibited shorter fixations on homophone errors as opposed to spelling control errors, particularly on high-frequency words.…”

What Are the Modulators of Cross-Language Syntactic Activation During Natural Reading?

“…Prior eye-tracking studies of sentence reading (e.g., Titone et al, 2011;Pivneva et al, 2014;Whitford and Titone, 2015;Friesen et al, 2020) and paragraph reading (e.g., Whitford and Titone, 2012;Whitford and Titone, 2015) have highlighted the influence of current L2 exposure on lexical access and reading fluency. Many studies reported bidirectional L1-L2 influences that are modulated by individual differences in current L2 exposure, although these studies were not focused on syntactic processing per se.…”