AcknowledgmentsWe are grateful to Yuki Tokumaru and Jean-Marc Dewaele for help at different stages of the experiment. AbstractAn experiment investigated whether Japanese speakers' categorization of objects and substances by shape or material is influenced by acquiring English. Based on Imai and Gentner (1997), subjects were presented with an item such as a cork pyramid and asked to choose between two other items that matched it for shape (plastic pyramid) or for material (piece of cork). The hypotheses were that for simple objects the number of shapebased categorizations would increase according to experience of English and that the preference for shape-and material-based categorizations of Japanese speakers of English would differ from mono lingual speakers of both languages. Subjects were 18 adult Japanese users of English who had lived in English-speaking countries between six months and three years (short-stay group), and 18 who had lived in English-speaking count ries for three years or more (long-stay group). Both groups achieved above criterion on an English vocabulary test. Results were: both groups preferred material responses for simple objects and substances but not for complex objects, in line with Japanese mono linguals, but the long-stay group showed more shape preference than the short-stay group and also were less different from American monolinguals. These effects of acquiring a second lang uage on cat eg orization have implications for conceptual representation and methodology.

In spite of burgeoning evidence that the orthographic forms ('spellings') of second language (L2) words affect L2 learners' pronunciation, little is known about the pronunciation of known words in experienced learners. In a series of four studies, we investigated various orthographic effects on the pronunciation of L2 English words in instructed learners with ten years' experience of learning English. Participants were native users of the phonologically transparent Italian writing system. Study 1 investigated the pronunciation of 'silent letters', using a word reading task and a word repetition task. Study 2 examined the effects of vowel spelling on vowel duration, namely whether L2 speakers produce the same target vowel as longer when it is spelled with a vowel digraph than with a singleton letter. Study 3 explored the effects of the morphemic spelling of the past tense marker using a verb paradigm production task. Study 4 tested whether L2 speakers produce homophonic words differently when they are spelled differently. Results confirmed that orthographic forms affect experienced instructed learners' pronunciation of known words, albeit less so in immediate word repetition than in reading aloud tasks.

Second languages (L2s) are often learned through spoken and written input, and L2 orthographic forms (spellings) can lead to non-native-like pronunciation. The present study investigated whether orthography can lead experienced learners of English L2 to make a phonological contrast in their speech production that does not exist in English. Double consonants represent geminate (long) consonants in Italian but not in English. In Experiment 1, native English speakers and English L2 speakers (Italians) were asked to read aloud English words spelled with a single or double target consonant letter, and consonant duration was compared. The English L2 speakers produced the same consonant as shorter when it was spelled with a single letter, and longer when spelled with a double letter. Spelling did not affect consonant duration in native English speakers. In Experiment 2, effects of orthographic input were investigated by comparing 2 groups of English L2 speakers (Italians) performing a delayed word repetition task with or without orthographic input; the same orthographic effects were found in both groups. These results provide arguably the first evidence that L2 orthographic forms can lead experienced L2 speakers to make a contrast in their L2 production that does not exist in the language. The effect arises because L2 speakers are affected by the interaction between the L2 orthographic form (number of letters), and their native orthography-phonology mappings, whereby double consonant letters represent geminate consonants. These results have important implications for future studies investigating the effects of orthography on native phonology and for L2 phonological development models.

This paper investigates whether bilinguals' and monolinguals' concepts of entities differ when the bilinguals' two languages provide two different representations of the same entity. Previous research shows that speakers of languages that have a grammatical gender system think of objects as being masculine or feminine in line with the grammatical gender of the objects' nouns. The present study investigates the effects of grammatical gender on concepts of objects in bilingual speakers of two languages that assign opposite gender to the same object. Italian-German bilingual children and Italian monolingual controls performed an on-line voice attribution task. All children were native speakers of Italian and living in Italy. Results show that Italian monolingual children attribute more female voices to objects whose noun is grammatically feminine in Italian. Monolinguals also show a preference for attributing voices consistently with Italian grammatical gender assignment. Italian-German bilingual children are not affected by Italian grammatical gender. It is argued that when the two languages of a bilingual represent a specific aspect of reality differently, the bilingual may develop different concepts from a monolingual. This is due to the knowledge of two specific languages rather than to bilingualism per se, and to linguistic rather than cultural factors.

This paper provides evidence that the second language orthographic input affects the mental representations of L2 phonology in instructed beginner L2 learners. Previous research has shown that orthographic representations affect monolinguals’ performance in phonological awareness tasks; in instructed L2 learners such representations could also affect pronunciation. This study looked at the phonological representations of Chinese rimes in beginner learners of Chinese as a foreign language, using a phoneme counting task and a phoneme segmentation task. Results show that learners do not count or segment the main vowel in those syllables where it is not represented in the pinyin (romanisation) orthographic representations. It appears that the pinyin orthographic input is reinterpreted according to L1 phonology–orthography correspondences, and interacts with the phonological input in shaping the phonological representations of Chinese syllables in beginner learners. This explains previous findings that learners of Chinese do not pronounce the main vowel in these syllables.

A note on versions:The version presented here may differ from the published version or, version of record, if you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher's version. Please see the 'permanent WRAP url' above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.For more information, please contact the WRAP Team at: wrap@warwick.ac.uk Bassetti, Sokolović-Perović, Mairano, & Cerni (2018, online first) Orthography-induced length contrasts in the second language phonological systems of L2 speakers of English: Evidence from minimal pairs. Language and Speech. DOI: 10. Abstract Research shows that the orthographic forms ('spellings') of second language (L2) words affect speech production in L2 speakers. The present study investigated whether English orthographic forms lead L2 speakers to produce English homophonic word pairs as phonological minimal pairs. Targets were 33 orthographic minimal pairs, that is to say homophonic words that would be pronounced as phonological minimal pairs if orthography affects pronunciation. Word pairs contained the same target sound spelled with one letter or two, such as the /n/ in finish and Finnish (both /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ in Standard British English). To test for effects of length and type of L2 exposure, we compared Italian instructed learners of English, Italian-English late bilinguals with lengthy naturalistic exposure, and English natives. A reading aloud task revealed that Italian speakers of English L2 produce two English homophonic words as a minimal pair distinguished by different consonant or vowel length, for instance producing the target /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ with a short [n] or a long [nː] to reflect the number of consonant letters in the spelling of the words finish and Finnish. Similar effects were found on the pronunciation of vowels, for instance in the orthographic pair scene-seen (both /siːn/). Naturalistic exposure did not reduce orthographic effects, as effects were found both in learners and in late bilinguals living in an English-speaking environment. It appears that the orthographic form of L2 words can result in the establishment of a phonological contrast that does not exist in the target language. Results have implications for models of L2 phonological development. Bassetti, Sokolović-Perović, Mairano, & Cerni (2018, online first) Orthography-induced length contrasts in the second language phonological systems of L2 speakers of English: Evidence from minimal pairs. Language and Speech. DOI: 10.1177/002383091878014 2 Unlike native languages, second languages are often acquired through a mixture of spoken and written input. Recent research shows that the orthographic forms, or spellings, of second language (L2) sounds and words affect L2 speech production (Bassetti, Hayes-Harb, & Escudero, 2015), and there have been claims that L2 orthographic forms may lead L2 speakers to establish phonological contrasts that do not exist in the target language (Bassetti, 2017). The present paper therefore aims to investigate the...

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Orthographic forms (spellings) can affect pronunciation in a second language (L2); however, it is not known whether the same orthographic form can affect both L2 pronunciation and metalinguistic awareness. To test this, we asked 260 speakers of English—first‐language (L1) English speakers, L1 Italian and L2 English sequential bilinguals, and L1 Italian learners of L2 English—to perform word repetition tasks and rhyme judgment tasks for word pairs containing the same consonant or vowel spelled with a letter or a digraph. L1 Italian speakers established a long–short contrast and used consonant and vowel length contrastively in their L2 English, both in production and in an awareness task. This provides evidence for a direct link between the effects of the same orthographic phenomenon on speech production and on metalinguistic awareness. Results were strengthened by combining experimental and qualitative data in the study of orthographic effects. Finally, the results show that proficiency predicts orthographic effects, and that orthographic effect predictors vary in naturalistic and instructed contexts.