Abstract
Word recognition is an important part of the reading process. During word recognition a Dutch reader of English will regularly process English words wich in different ways resemble Dutch words. Many of them are cognate words. Some examples are: block, dance, beer, bath. If it could be shown that the meaning of such English words need not be learned but becomes available to a reader in the same way as it becomes available when their Dutch counterparts are processed in a Dutch context language teaching could benefit from that insight. Using a lexical decision paradigm with pseudo-cognates as stimuli (3 to 5 letter words) it was shown that the following types of cognates were recognised as such during visual word recognition in English by Dutch subjects (first year university students not specializing in English): 1. Dutch cognate words that had kept their spelling in an English context. 2. Dutch cognate words that in an English context were still homophonous with their Dutch version and differed in the spelling of only one phoneme from their Dutch counterparts (cf. the Dutch-English cognate pair TEKST-TEXT). Of all other types of cognate words, also those that were homophonous with their counterparts in the other language but differed in the spelling of two or more phonemes, the cognate status was not recognised. Applications of the results are discussed.
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