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Article published In:
Studies of Bilingual Processing Presented to Kenneth I. Forster
Edited by Nan Jiang
[Journal of Second Language Studies 4:2] 2021
► pp. 375–411

Of revistas and magacínes

Lexical competition in the online processing of established loanwords

| University of Maryland at College Park, USA
| The Pennsylvania State University, USA

The transfer of words from one language to another is ubiquitous in many of the world’s languages. While loanwords have a rich literature in the fields of historical linguistics, language contact, and sociolinguistics, little work has been done examining how loanwords are processed by bilinguals with knowledge of both the source and recipient languages. The present study uses pupillometry to compare the online processing of established loanwords in Puerto Rican Spanish to native Spanish words by highly proficient Puerto Rican Spanish-English bilinguals. Established loanwords elicited a significantly larger pupillary response than native Spanish words, with the pupillary response modulated by both the frequency of the loanword itself and of the native Spanish counterpart. These findings suggest that established loanwords are processed differently than native Spanish words and compete with their native equivalents, potentially due to both intra- and inter-lingual effects of saliency.

Keywords: bilingualism, borrowing, loanwords, online processing, pupillometry
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1How do loanwords arise?
    • 1.2Loanwords and bilingualism
    • 1.3Using pupillometry
    • 1.4Research questions and hypotheses
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Stimuli
    • 2.3Design
    • 2.4Procedure
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Pre-processing and data cleaning
    • 3.2GAMMs
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Comparing established loanwords and native Spanish words
    • 4.2Frequency effects on the pupillary response
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 August 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.21010.joh
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