The Role of Phonology in the L2 Processing of Interlingual Homographs
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2025-06-15
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en
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This study investigated the effect of phonological overlap on the processing of interlingual homographs in an L2. The role of phonology in processing such homographs remains underexplored, with previous studies reporting conflicting findings. Interlingual homographs with full phonological overlap (IHP+) and without overlap (IHP-) were compared in a visual English lexical decision task performed by Dutch-English bilinguals. Reaction times and accuracy rates were measured across conditions. The results showed a larger inhibition effect in reaction times for IHP- than for IHP+, suggesting co-activation of both phonological representations, with non-identical representations competing more strongly and causing greater inhibition. Additionally, inhibition effects decreased as L2 proficiency increased. Despite some methodological limitations, the findings support the nonselective access hypothesis, indicating that both languages are activated during bilingual word recognition. The results are interpreted within the BIA+ model, offering further insight into the role of phonological representations in bilingual word recognition.
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