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

Abstract

Two experiments examined the role of phonological overlap and form similarity on cognate status effects in Chinese-Japanese bilinguals. Experiment 1 investigated cross-script priming in word-fragment completion by subjects who were either Chinese-Japanese bilingual (22 Chinese students studying in Japan) or Japanese monolingual (56 students). The subjects studied Chinese words and then completed test fragments written in Japanese Hiragana. The transcriptions of the test fragments into Kanji characters were manipulated: identical-cognate, visually similar-cognate, or non-cognate. The results indicated that the completion rate of primed fragments increased for the identical-cognates only. A Chinese lexical decision task was carried out by bilingual subjects (18 Chinese students) in Experiment 2. The decision that items were Chinese was made faster for identical-cognates than it was for visually similar-cognates and non-cognates.The results indicate that phonological overlap is not indispensable for cognate status effect and they are consistent with the non-selective access view of bilinguals.

Constraints on parallel activation in bilingual spoken language processing: Examining proficiency and lexical status using eye-tracking

“…Evidence supporting parallel activation of cognate translation equivalents includes findings of stronger cognate translation priming (Gollan, Forster & Frost, 1997), faster cognate translation times (De Groot, 1992;De Groot, Dannenburg, & Van Hell, 1994), and more accurate cognate processing (Friel & Kennison, 2001;Tokowicz, Kroll, DeGroot, & Van Hell, 2002) relative to words with unrelated translation equivalents (noncognates). In general, a processing advantage for cognates is well-established during word production (e.g., Costa et al, 2000;De Groot, Borgwaldt, Bos, & Van den Eijnden, 2002;De Groot & Keijzer, 2000;Gollan & Acenas, 2004;Kohnert, 2004;Roberts &Deslauriers, 1999) andcomprehension (e.g., De Groot et al, 2002;De Groot & Keijzer, 2000;Dijkstra, Grainger, & Van Heuven, 1999;Lalor & Kirsner, 2001;Lemhö fer, Dijkstra, & Michel, 2004;Nakayama, 2002;Van Hell & Dijkstra, 2002). Nevertheless, it remains unclear how cognate processing influences overall activation of an unused language.…”

Revisiting the Influence of Phonological Similarity on Cognate Processing: Evidence from Cantonese-Japanese Bilinguals

“…While these studies provide a wealth of evidence for the cognate facilitation effect, it is difficult to examine the influences of orthography and phonology on word processing separately because orthography and phonology are always closely associated in alphabetic languages. Only a few studies have adopted two logographic scripts, such as Chinese and Japanese Kanji characters (for exceptions, see Hsieh et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2023;Nakayama, 2002;Xiong et al, 2020). Therefore, how cognates are processed and represented in the mental lexicon of bilinguals who speak non-alphabetic languages remains unclear, especially in terms of the role of phonology in cognate processing.…”

“…Therefore, the present study examined cognate lexical decision in two logographic scripts, namely traditional Chinese and Japanese Kanji characters. This comparison may deepen our understanding of the influence of phonology on cognate processing because, in many cases, the pronunciation of the same symbol (character) is very different in these two languages (Nakayama, 2002;Taylor & Taylor, 2014). Using these two languages allows researchers to examine the role of phonology in cognate processing by varying the phonological similarity of cognate words that share identical graphic symbols.…”

Bilingualism, cognates and reading fluency in children

“…Phonological representations are also more convergent for cognates than non‐cognates. Tasks relying on phonological activation, including lexical decision (Van Heuven et al ; Van Hell & Dijkstra ) and cross‐script repetition priming (Nakayama, ) show shorter reaction times for cognates than for non‐cognates. In short, cognates have been shown to consistently co‐activate the non‐target language forms.…”