Effects of Frequency and Phonological Ambiguity on Naming Serbo-Croatian Words

Abstract

The Serbo-Croatian word corresponding to the English noun wind is written BETAP in the Cyrillic alphabet and VETAR in the Roman alphabet. Typically, bi-alphabetic readers name BETAP more slowly and with more errors than VETAR. BETAP is phonologically ambiguous because B and P specify the phonemes /b/ and /p/ in Roman and /v/ and /r/ in Cyrillic. We conducted an experiment to determine whether this naming difference between phonologically ambiguous and phonologically unique words depends on word frequency. The naming difference was of the same magnitude for high- and low-frequency words when the stimulus presentation was prolonged; with very brief presentation, the naming difference remained but frequency influenced only the phonologically ambiguous words. The results are discussed with respect to a single-route account of naming in which (a) a lower orthographic-phonological network, shaped by asymptotic learning, generates automatically all phonological patterns specified by a letter string, and (b) a higher phonological-semantic network, shaped by individual word frequencies, enhances phonological pattern selection through adaptive resonance.