Homophone Advantage in Sentence Acceptability Judgment: An Experiment with Japanese Kanji Words and Articulatory Suppression Technique

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role and nature of phonology in silent reading of Japanese sentences. An experiment was conducted using a Japanese sentence acceptability judgment task. One important finding was that participants more rapidly rejected homophonic sentences in which one two-kanji compound word was replaced by its homophone word than non-homophonic sentences. In the latter, the word was replaced by a non-homophone spelling control; that is, we observed a homophone advantage. Participants were able to identify the correct word easily through foil's homophonic mate. This indicated that activated phonology played a role in the Japanese sentence acceptability judgment task and it contributed to the error detection/recovery process. Another important finding was that the homophone facilitation effect remained under articulatory suppression. It confirmed that phonology was activated at an early stage as abstract, non-articulatory phonology.