THE EFFECT OF COGNATE WORDS ON LEXICAL ACCESS OF ENGLISH AS A THIRD LANGUAGE

Abstract In this paper, the results of an experimental study carried out in order to investigate the effect of triple cognates in the lexical access of speakers of English (L3), German (L2), and Brazilian Portuguese (L1) is presented. Participants performed a reading task, containing 60 experimental sentences with the following critical words: triple cognates, double cognates between Brazilian Portuguese and English, and double cognates between German and English. Participants’ eye movements were recorded while they performed the task. The measures of first fixation and first reading pass times were analyzed. The results suggested that triple cognates were processed faster than their respective controls in first fixation (M: 264/311ms (cognate/control); p=0,03) and first pass (M: 407/448ms (cognate/control); p=0,05), which was interpreted as evidence of a nonselective lexical access and an integrated lexicon for the multilinguals’ languages. In addition, these results contribute to the literature of lexical access of multilinguals, favoring the view that all the languages of a multilingual are active even when the speaker intends to use only one language.

摘要 本研究旨在考察三重同源词对以巴西葡萄牙语为第一语言（L1）、德语为第二语言（L2）、英语为第三语言（L3）的多语使用者词汇通达（lexical access）的影响，现将相关实验研究结果报告如下。实验参与者完成一项阅读任务，该任务包含60个实验句，其中关键刺激词分为三类：三重同源词、巴西葡萄牙语-英语双同源词以及德语-英语双同源词。实验过程中记录了参与者的眼动轨迹，并对首次注视时长与首次通过阅读时长两项指标进行了分析。结果显示，在首次注视时长（同源词/控制词：均值264/311毫秒；p=0.03）与首次通过阅读时长（同源词/控制词：均值407/448毫秒；p=0.05）两项指标中，三重同源词的加工速度均快于对应控制词。该结果被视作多语使用者存在非选择性词汇通达以及其多语言共享整合词典的证据。此外，本研究结果丰富了多语使用者词汇通达领域的相关文献，支持了“即使使用者仅意图使用一种语言，其掌握的所有语言仍处于激活状态”这一学术观点。