L2 Nonword Recognition and Phonotactic Constraints

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Mikhaylova, Anna
Contributor
Abstract

This lexical decision task tests the salience of the first language phonological filter in fluent Russian-English adult bilinguals. The results show that illegal English nonwords with sound clusters impossible for English but which are at the same time legal for Russian (which means they occur in Russian), are sooner recognized as such than those nonwords that do not violate constraints of either language. All critical items have the same structure (CCVCC), with one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence and are controlled for frequency and neighborhood density. As expected, both groups have significantly lower accuracy and take longer to process legal nonwords, and native English speakers have faster processing times and better accuracy than the bilingual group. The results of the experiment and the debriefing session suggest that, at the level of phonological processing, fluent adult bilinguals seem well aware of the information that is impossible in L2 and reject illegal items before accessing lexical knowledge.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2009-03-23
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection