Abstract
An event-related potential (ERP) experiment was conducted to examine how native Chinese speakers with highly advanced Japanese language skills would process a sentence of a targeted language with no activation of an embedded word of an untargeted language. For the second language (L2) of Japanese in Experiment 1, three incorrect conditions were prepared for sentence correctness decisions: a Japanese sentence, including 1) a Chinese word (not existent in Japanese) semantically matched for the context, 2) a Chinese word (not existent in Japanese) semantically mismatched for the context, and 3) a nonword. For the first language (L1) of Chinese, sentences and target words were reversed (i.e., Chinese/Japanese respectively) for Experiment 2. The P200 peak appeared only for semantically mismatched L1 Chinese words embedded in L2 Japanese sentences compared to sentences containing a nonword. This P200 peak does not appear in the processing of L1 Chinese sentences compared to sentences containing a nonword. This result suggests extra attention to orthography is required at the early stage of processing. This reduces the activation of irrelevant information from the non-targeted language, in this case L1 Chinese. The N400 component was elicited in processing both L2 Japanese and L1 Chinese sentences with nonwords against L2 and L1 sentences with semantically matched and mismatched words of an untargeted language. These findings suggest that, regardless of whether there is a sentential semantic match in a targeted language, Chinese and Japanese bilinguals activate lexical concepts non-language-selectively. Although the nontargeted lexical concepts are non-selectively activated, they do not seem to be used for sentential interpretation for L2 Japanese and L1 Chinese.
Highlights
Two conflicting processing models have been presented for bilingual lexical access, a language-selective lexical access model and language-non-selective model
In order to investigate language-selective or language-non-selective activation of lexical concepts, and their use for sentential interpretation of non-targeted language, the present study investigated whether or not Chinese-and-Japanese bilinguals activate a word of an untargeted language embedded in a sentence of the targeted language, and whether a untargeted word would be activated for sentential interpretation of targeted language
Unlike L2 Japanese sentence processing in Experiment 1, the P200 amplitude was not observed in L1 Chinese sentence processing in in the 180 - 240 interval
Summary
Two conflicting processing models have been presented for bilingual lexical access, a language-selective lexical access model and language-non-selective model. Language-selective access models (e.g., Gerard & Scarborough, 1989; Rodriguez-Fornells, Rotte, Heinze, Nösselt, & Münte, 2002) suggest that bilinguals can process the meaning of words in a targeted language with no activation from a non-targeted language. Chen (2002) counted 4600 Japanese kanji-compound words, and noted that 54.5% of those compounds can be written with same orthographic shape to denote the same meaning in Chinese. Among the basic 2060 two-kanji compound words used in levels 4 to 2 of the Japanese proficiency test (Japan Foundation and Association of International Education, Japan, 2004), 1509 words (73.25%) are orthographically and conceptually similar across Chinese and Japanese (Park, Xiong, & Tamaoka, 2014; Xiong & Tamaoka, 2014). A database of kanji compounds is available at http://kanjigodb.herokuapp.com; Yu and Tamaoka (2015) provide an explanation of how to use this website and search engine
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