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Writing Systems, Reading Processes, and Cross-Linguistic Influences: Reflections from the Chinese, Japanese and Korean Languages
Edited by Hye K. Pae
[Bilingual Processing and Acquisition 7] 2018
► pp. 201–220

Chapter 10
L1-referenced phonological processing in Japanese-English bilinguals

Previous research investigating second-language processing difficulties experienced by Japanese native speakers is consistent with the notion that these individuals are representing foreign words in terms of their native phonological structure at an abstract underlying level. This issue is illustrated here by an experiment that compared Japanese-English bilinguals and native English speakers on their immediate recall of English pseudo-words. Recall performance was dependent on the number of phonemes within list items for the monolingual participants, but on the number of morae for the Japanese bilinguals, indicating that they were indeed automatically activating “Japanized” abstract representations upon encountering the non-native constructions. It is particularly noteworthy that this appeared to be true regardless of the age at which the bilinguals had learnt English.

Keywords: L2 phonological processing, Japanese-English bilinguals, immediate serial recall, phonological representations
Article outline
  • Japanese phonological structure and the processing of consonant clusters
  • Immediate serial recall and the word length effect
  • A new experiment
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
  • Results
    • The effect of demographic and language background variables
    • The effect of age of English acquisition
  • Discussion
    • The effect of language background factors
    • The nature of phonological representations
  • Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 10 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bpa.7.10bro
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