Cross-script phonological priming with Japanese Kanji primes and English targets

Abstract

Two experiments investigated whether Japanese–English bilinguals have integrated phonological stores for their two languages using a masked phonological priming task with Japanese Kanji (logographic) primes and English targets. In both experiments, lexical decisions for English target words were facilitated by phonologically similar Kanji primes. Furthermore, the size of the phonological priming effect was uninfluenced by the participants' English proficiency or target word frequency, which suggests that the priming effect arose from feedback from sublexical phonological representations to lexical orthographic representations. Because of the orthographic and phonological differences between Japanese and English, these findings provide particularly strong support for the Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA+) model's assumption that representations are integrated across languages.

Keywords:

• Bilingual
• Cross-script
• Japanese–English
• Kanji
• Phonological priming
• Word recognition

We thank Keisuke Ida for assistance in testing the participants and Kazunaga Matsuki for assistance in programming and data analysis.

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant to Debra Jared and by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists to Mariko Nakayama. The research was part of an MSc thesis by Eriko Ando.

We thank Keisuke Ida for assistance in testing the participants and Kazunaga Matsuki for assistance in programming and data analysis.

This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant to Debra Jared and by a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists to Mariko Nakayama. The research was part of an MSc thesis by Eriko Ando.

Notes

¹ A mora-timed language is one in which the phonological duration of every mora is equal. As examples of morae, in Japanese, the syllables a, na and ka each have a single mora (V or CV syllable with a short vowel), whereas nai and kan each have two.

² An L2 learner starts with the sound categories from their L1 and then with L2 experience, creates new categories as needed for their L2. In his Speech Learning Model, Flege (1995) proposed that the more distant an L2 sound is from the closest L1 sound, the more easily a new L2 category will be created. The reason that Japanese learners of English have difficulty with English l and r sounds is because both are similar to the Japanese r. Initially, a Japanese learner of English assimilates both to the Japanese r; that is, they only have the Japanese r representation. As they gain experience with English, they may create new categories for the English r and l sounds. Flege's Speech Learning Model predicts that the English r category should be easier to create because it is more different from Japanese r than is English l. Aoyama, Flege, Guion, Akahane-Yamada, and Yamada (2004) provide support for this hypothesis (see their paper for a discussion of the acquisition of speech sounds by Japanese learners of English).