When blue is a disyllabic word: Perceptual epenthesis in the mental lexicon of second language learners. Issue 5 (November 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: DARCY, ISABELLE; THOMAS, TRISHA
• Is Part Of: Bilingualism. Volume 22:Issue 5(2019)
• Page Start: 1141
• Page End: 1159
• Publication Date: 2019-11
• Subjects: phonotactic grammar, -- perceptual epenthesis, -- phonolexical encoding, -- bilingual mental lexicon, -- Korean, -- L2 English; Bilingualism -- Periodicals; Psycholinguistics -- Periodicals; Language acquisition -- Periodicals; 404.2
• DOI: 10.1017/S1366728918001050
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1366-7289

Abstract

Abstract : Word-initial obstruent-liquid clusters, frequent in English (e.g., blue ), are prohibited in Korean. Korean learners of English perceptually repair illicit word-initial consonant sequences with an epenthetic vowel [ʊ]. Thus they might perceive blue as b[ʊ]lue, and, at least initially, also represent it lexically as a disyllabic word. We ask whether the sound sequences permitted in one's L1 influence the way L2 words are represented in the mental lexicon. If they do, we predict that in a lexical decision task, Korean learners will accept nonwords containing epenthetic vowels ([bʊˈluː] for blue ) as real English words more often than English listeners. These predictions were confirmed: we observed high error rates on test nonwords ([bʊˈluː]) by the Korean participants only, accompanied by few errors on control nonwords ([bɪˈluː]), suggesting that learners' lexical representations for familiar L2 words can be activated by nonwords that obey their L1 phonotactic grammar.