Effects of First Language and Phonological Accessibility on Kanji Recognition

Abstract

This study examines the transfer of learners' first language (Ll) orthographic processing strategies to second language (L2) processing. Two groups of college students learning Japanese, a group of learners whose L1 writing system is phonographic and another group whose L1 employs a morphographic writing system, were tested on their ability to represent novel kanji characters in short-term memory. For students in the phonographic language background group, phonologically accessible characters (i.e., characters whose inner radical was a pronounceable katakana character) were easier to remember than phonologically inaccessible characters (i.e., characters whose inner radical was not pronounceable). In contrast, the absence of the pronounceable elements in the stimuli did not hinder the memory performance of the morphographic language background group. This interaction between L1 background and the phonological inaccessibility of stimuli is interpreted as showing that, due to their L1 experience, L2 learners from a morphographic language background use more flexible strategies for phonological decoding for new characters than learners from a phonographic language background. THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT STUDY is to investigate the effects of learners' first language (Ll) writing systems on the strategies they use to obtain phonological information from a second language (L2) orthography.' This study was motivated by two theoretical issues, the first of w&ch stems from the language transfer hypothesis, which predicts that L2 learners will use the orthographic processing strategies specific to the L1 while processing different linguistic features in L2. The second theoretical issue concerns the role of phonological recoding in word recognition in both alphabetic and logographic languages. Research in experimental psychology has established that acoustically encoded stimuli are more advantageous than visually encoded stimuli for short-term information storage and The M o d a Language Journal, 82, i, (1998) 01998 The Modern Language Journal 0026-7902/98/69-82 $1.50/0that readers of any language construct phonological codes from visual representation in order to access short-term memory. Given these empirical findings, this study tests the hypothesis that learners from different language backgrounds will use different strategies for deriving phonological representations for new words in L2. The rationale for this hypothesis is described briefly below.

The Effects of First Language Orthographic Features on Second Language Reading in Text

“…One would be the use of nonreal words in the measures; a few studies on L1 effects on L2 word recognition use pseudowords and nonwords in their measures (e.g., Koda, 1988Koda, , 1990Mori, 1998). This may be because the research inquiry of the studies prefers nonreal words as stimuli; however, the limitations regarding the usage of pseudowords or nonwords as stimuli have been pointed out.…”

Are alphabetic language -derived models of L2 reading relevant to L1 logographic background readers?

“…Akamatsu, 2003;Chikamatsu, 1996;Koda, 2000Koda, , 2008Mori, 1998;Muljani, Koda, & Moates, 1998). For example, Koda (1989Koda ( , 1990 found that readers with an L1 logographic script learning background are better at L2 reading when deprived of the ability to process words phonologically than readers with an L1 alphabetic script learning background.…”

Rutas de acceso semántico de la escritura «kanji» en lectores no nativos: ¿vía fonológica o vía ortográfica? Creencias y estrategias

“…Para Mori (1998), aunque una unidad morfémica está asociada con una forma fonética, el sistema morfográfico dista mucho de ser igual a un sistema fonográfico. Una razón es que no existe una relación uniforme entre grafema y fonema.…”

“…De acuerdo con Mori (1998), la investigación en psicología experimental en adquisición del lenguaje y en lingüística ha establecido básicamente que el lector de cualquier lenguaje usa códigos fonológicos para acceder a la memoria de corto plazo que le permite acceder al significado de un texto. No obstante, se reconoce que existen diferencias estructurales entre un sistema fonográfico y morfográfico que podría provocar que lectores habituados a sus respectivos sistemas de escritura usen las mismas estrategias para tratar de interpretar códigos fonológicos en representaciones visuales.…”