Recognizing cognates and interlingual homographs: Effects of code similarity in language specific and generalized lexical decision

Abstract

Four experiments investigated how cross-linguistic overlap in semantics, orthography, and phonology affects bilingual word recognition in different variants of the lexical decision task. Dutch-English bilinguals performed a language-specific or a generalized lexical decision task including words that are spelled and / or pronounced the same in English and Dutch and that matched one-language control words from both languages. In Experiments 1 and 3, 'false friends' were presented with different meanings in the two languages (e.g., SPOT), while Experiments 2 and 4 contained 'cognates' with the same meanings (e.g., FILM) across languages. The language-specific Experiments 1 and 2 replicated and qualified an earlier study (Dijkstra, Grainger, & Van Heuven, 1999). In the generalized Experiment 3, participants reacted equally fast on Dutch-English homographs and Dutch control words, indicating that their response was primarily based on the fastest available orthographic code (Dutch). In Experiment 4, cognates were recognized faster than English and Dutch controls, suggesting co-activation of the cognates' semantics. The nonword results indicate that the bilingual rejection procedure can to some extent be language-specific. All results are discussed within the BIA+ model for bilingual word recognition