Bilingual Lexical Representation: The Status of Spanish-English Cognates

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to determine the functional status of cognates. Two hypotheses were considered. According to the first hypothesis, language is a critical feature governing lexical organization, and cognates may therefore be equated with morphologically unrelated translations. According to a second hypothesis, however, language is not a critical feature governing lexical organization. Instead, the boundaries between perceptual categories are determined by morphological considerations, and cognates may therefore be equated with intra-lingual variations such as inflections and derivations. If the first hypothesis is correct, cognate performance should follow that observed for translations, but if the second hypothesis is correct, cognate performance should follow that observed for inflections and derivations. The experiments used different procedures in order to discount taskspecific explanations. The first experiment involved repetition priming in a lexical decision task, and emphasis was placed on relative priming; that is, on the amount of facilitation which occurs when, for example, OBEDIENCIA primes OBEDIENCE, expressed as a fraction of the amount of facilitation that occurs when the same word is presented on each occasion (i.e., when OBEDIENCE is used to prime OBEDIENCE). The second experiment tested memory for language. Four types of cognates were tested. These were: orthographically identical cognates, regular cognates with cion/tion substitution, regular cognates with dad/ty substitution, and irregularly derived cognates. The results were unequivocal. The priming values observed previously for cognates were qualitatively and quantitatively similar to those observed for inflections and derivations, and this classification was confirmed in the second experiment, involving memory for language. The results are consistent with the general proposition that morphology rather than language governs the boundaries between perceptual categories, and a number of specific explanations are reviewed.

The cognate facilitation effect in bilingual lexical decision is influenced by stimulus list composition

“…In Experiment 1, cognates in the standard version of our English lexical decision task-which included only cognates, English controls and 'regular' non-words-were recognised 31 ms more quickly than English controls, consistent with previous findings (e.g. Cristoffanini et al, 1986;De Groot & Nas, 1991;Dijkstra et al, 1999;Dijkstra et al, 2010;Dijkstra et al, 1998;Font, 2001;Lemhöfer et al, 2008;Peeters et al, 2013;Sánchez-Casas et al, 1992;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002). In contrast, cognates in the mixed version-which included, in addition to the same cognates and English controls, interlingual homographs, pseudohomophones and Dutch words -were recognised 8 ms more slowly, although this difference was not significant.…”

“…Cristoffanini et al, 1986;De Groot & Nas, 1991;Dijkstra et al, 1999;Dijkstra et al, 2010;Dijkstra et al, 1998;Font, 2001;Lemhöfer et al, 2008;Peeters et al, 2013;Sánchez-Casas et al, 1992;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002), while the absence of a cognate advantage in the mixed version replicates Poort et al's (2016) findings. Also in agreement with previous findings demonstrating that an interlingual homograph inhibition effect should be observed in single-language lexical decision tasks when those include non-target language words that require a 'no'-response (e.g.…”

“…The cognate facilitation effect has most commonly been observed in visual lexical decision experiments when the target words are presented in isolation (Cristoffanini, Kirsner, & Milech, 1986;De Groot & Nas, 1991;Dijkstra, Grainger, & Van Heuven, 1999;Dijkstra, Miwa, Brummelhuis, Sappelli, & Baayen, 2010;Dijkstra, Van Jaarsveld, & Ten Brinke, 1998;Font, 2001;Lemhöfer, et al, 2008;Peeters, Dijkstra, & Grainger, 2013;Sánchez-Casas, García-Albea, & Davis, 1992;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002), but also when they are embedded in sentences, although in the latter case the effect is often smaller (Duyck, Van Assche, Drieghe, & Hartsuiker, 2007;Libben & Titone, 2009;Schwartz & Kroll, 2006;Van Assche, Duyck, Hartsuiker, & Diependaele, 2009;Van Hell & De Groot, 2008). In addition, the cognate facilitation effect has been observed in word production: bilinguals are faster to name pictures of cognates (e.g.…”

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: Evidence for nonselective lexical access.

“…Dijkstra et al, 1999;Schwartz & Kroll, 2006). Also, Lemhöfer, Dijkstra and Michel (2004) showed that this effect may accumulate over languages: using Dutch-English-German trilinguals, they reported faster responses to L3 words which are cognates with both L1 and L2 than for exclusive L3-L1 cognates.Initially, no cognate facilitation effect was found in L1 (e.g., Caramazza & Brones, 1979;Cristoffanini, Kirsner, & Milech, 1986) However, better controlled studies have recently reported evidence that does support this strong test of non-selective lexical access. Testing Dutch-English-French trilinguals,…”

The Cognate Status Effect in Lexical Processing by Chinese-Japanese Bilinguals

“…In the previous studies using roman scripts, the cognates have shared some letters (e.g., rico-RICH; in Sanchez-Casas et al, 1992) or have had the same stems and different suffixes (e.g., observacion-observation; in Cristoffanini, Kirsner, & Milech, 1986). In other words, the form similarity was defined by the extent of overlap of letters.…”