Heterophonic Homographs Research Articles

Inter- and Intra- Hemispheric Interactions in Reading Ambiguous Words

The present study investigated how the brain processes words with multiple meanings. Specifically, we examined the inter- and intra-hemispheric connectivity of unambiguous words compared to two types of ambiguous words: homophonic homographs, which have multiple meanings mapped to a single phonological representation and orthography, and heterophonic homographs, which have multiple meanings mapped to different phonological representations but the same orthography. Using a semantic relatedness judgment task and effective connectivity analysis via Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM) on previously published fMRI data (Bitan et al., 2017), we found that the two hemispheres compete in orthographic processing during the reading of unambiguous words. For heterophonic homographs, we observed increased connectivity within the left hemisphere, highlighting the importance of top-down re-activation of orthographic representations by phonological ones for considering alternative meanings. For homophonic homographs, we found a flow of information from the left to the right hemisphere and from the right to the left, indicating that the brain retrieves different meanings using different pathways. These findings provide novel insights into the complex mechanisms involved in language processing and shed light on the different communication patterns within and between hemispheres during the processing of ambiguous and unambiguous words.

Does diacritics-based lexical disambiguation modulate word frequency, length, and predictability effects? An eye-movements investigation of processing Arabic diacritics.

In Arabic, a predominantly consonantal script that features a high incidence of lexical ambiguity (heterophonic homographs), glyph-like marks called diacritics supply vowel information that clarifies how each consonant should be pronounced, and thereby disambiguate the pronunciation of consonantal strings. Diacritics are typically omitted from print except in situations where a particular homograph is not sufficiently disambiguated by the surrounding context. In three experiments we investigated whether the presence of disambiguating diacritics on target homographs modulates word frequency, length, and predictability effects during reading. In all experiments, the subordinate representation of the target homographs was instantiated by the diacritics (in the diacritized conditions), and by the context subsequent to the target homographs. The results replicated the effects of word frequency (Experiment 1), word length (Experiment 2), and predictability (Experiment 3). However, there was no evidence that diacritics-based disambiguation modulated these effects in the current study. Rather, diacritized targets in all experiments attracted longer first pass and later (go past and/or total fixation count) processing. These costs are suggested to be a manifestation of the subordinate bias effect. Furthermore, in all experiments, the diacritics-based disambiguation facilitated later sentence processing, relative to when the diacritics were absent. The reported findings expand existing knowledge about processing of diacritics, their contribution towards lexical ambiguity resolution, and sentence processing.

Phonological ambiguity modulates resolution of semantic ambiguity during reading: An fMRI study of Hebrew.

The current fMRI study examined the role of phonology in the extraction of meaning from print in each hemisphere by comparing homophonic and heterophonic homographs (ambiguous words in which both meanings have the same or different sounds respectively, e.g., bank or tear). The analysis distinguished between the first phase, in which participants read ambiguous words without context, and the second phase in which the context resolves the ambiguity. Native Hebrew readers were scanned during semantic relatedness judgments on pairs of words in which the first word was either a homophone or a heterophone and the second word was related to its dominant or subordinate meaning. In Phase 1 there was greater activation for heterophones in left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), pars opercularis, and more activation for homophones in bilateral IFG pars orbitalis, suggesting that resolution of the conflict at the phonological level has abolished the semantic ambiguity for heterophones. Reduced activation for all ambiguous words in temporo-parietal regions suggests that although ambiguity enhances controlled lexical selection processes in frontal regions it reduces reliance on bottom-up mapping processes. After presentation of the context, a larger difference between the dominant and subordinate meaning was found for heterophones in all reading-related regions, suggesting a greater engagement for heterophones with the dominant meaning. Altogether these results are consistent with the prominent role of phonological processing in visual word recognition. Finally, despite differences in hemispheric asymmetry between homophones and heterophones, ambiguity resolution, even toward the subordinate meaning, is largely left lateralized. (PsycINFO Database Record

Individual differences in autistic children’s homograph reading: Evidence from Hebrew

Background and aimsOn average, autistic individuals make more errors than control participants when reading aloud sentences containing heterophonic homographs—written words with multiple meanings a...

Parafoveal processing of Arabic diacritical marks.

Diacritics are glyph-like marks on letters that convey vowel information in Arabic, thus allowing for accurate pronunciation and disambiguation of homographs. For skilled readers, diacritics are usually omitted except when their omission causes ambiguity. Undiacritized homographs are very common in Arabic and are predominantly heterophones (where each meaning sounds different), with 1 version more common (dominant) than the others (subordinate). In this study the authors investigated parafoveal processing of diacritics during reading. They presented native readers with heterophonic homographs embedded in sentences with diacritization that instantiated either dominant or subordinate pronunciations of the homographs. Using the boundary paradigm, they presented previews of these words carrying either: identical diacritization to the target; inaccurate diacritization, such that if the target had dominant diacritization, the preview contained subordinate diacritization, and vice versa; or no diacritics. The results showed that readers processed the identity of diacritics parafoveally, such that inaccurate previews of the diacritics resulted in inflated fixation durations, particularly for fixations originating at close launch sites. Moreover, our results clearly indicate that readers' expectation for dominant or subordinate diacritization patterns influences their parafoveal and foveal processing of diacritics. Specifically, a perceived absence of diacritics (either in no-diacritics previews, or because the eyes were too far away to process the presence of diacritics) induced an expectation for the dominant pronunciation, whereas the perceived presence of diacritics induced an expectation for the subordinate meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record

Diacritics improve comprehension of the Arabic script by providing access to the meanings of heterophonic homographs

The diacritical markers that represent most of the vowels in the Arabic orthography are generally omitted from written texts. Previous research revealed that the absence of diacritics reduces reading comprehension performance even by skilled readers of Arabic. One possible explanation is that many Arabic words become ambiguous when diacritics are missing. Words of this kind are known as heterophonic homographs and are associated with at least two different pronunciations and meanings when written without diacritics. The aim of the two experiments reported in this study was to investigate whether the presence of diacritics improves the comprehension of all written words, or whether the effects are confined to heterophonic homographs. In Experiment 1, adult readers of Arabic were asked to decide whether written words had a living meaning. The materials included heterophonic homographs that had one living and one non-living meaning. Results showed that diacritics significantly increased the accuracy of semantic decisions about ambiguous words but had no effect on the accuracy of decisions about unambiguous words. Consistent results were observed in Experiment 2 where the materials comprised sentences rather than single words. Overall, the findings suggest that diacritics improve the comprehension of heterophonic homographs by facilitating access to semantic representations that would otherwise be difficult to access from print.

Writing morphophonology, reading lexical tone: Linguistic and experimental evidence in favour of morphographic spelling in Kabiye (Togo)

ABSTRACTThe shorter a word, the more likely it is to be lexically ambiguous. In the toneless standard orthography of Kabiye, a language of Togo, numerous monosyllabic heterophonic homographs (tonal minimal pairs) and homophonic homographs occur in the imperative and six associated conjugations. This paper presents the complete catalogue of these verbs, and then examines them in natural contexts. It goes on to propose a morphographic spelling in which elided root-final labial consonants are written as superscript silent letters to help the reader identify the lexeme. This spelling is tested against a diacritic tonographic alternative in an oral reading experiment. The results show that those who learnt the morphographic spelling gained more in reading accuracy than those who learnt the tonographic spelling.

Morphological Decomposition in Reading Hebrew Homographs

The present work investigates whether and how morphological decomposition processes bias the reading of Hebrew heterophonic homographs, i.e., unique orthographic patterns that are associated with two separate phonological, semantic entities depicted by means of two morphological structures (linear and nonlinear). In order to reveal the nature of morphological processes involved in the reading of Hebrew homographs, we tested 146 university students with three computerized experiments, each experiment focusing on a different level of processing. Participants were divided into three experimental groups given that the three experiments used the same stimulus lists. Evidence obtained from the analysis of the participants' processing time and processing accuracy points to a propensity to process heterophonic homographs by default as morpho-syntactically simple rather than complex words. Findings are discussed with reference to assumptions made by Dual-Route models regarding the importance of morphological knowledge in fast and accurate access of written words' representations which mediate the retrieval of their meanings with direct reference to the context in which they occur.

Phonological processing dynamics in bilingual word naming.

The current study investigated phonological processing dynamics in bilingual word naming. English-French and French-English bilinguals named interlingual heterophonic homographs (i.e., words that share orthography but not meaning or pronunciation across languages), heterophonic cognates (i.e., words that share both orthography and meaning across languages, but not pronunciations), interlingual homophones (i.e., words that share pronunciation, but not orthography or meaning across languages), and single-language matched control words in both English and French naming tasks. Cross-language phonological activation was strongest in bilinguals' second language. The results provided evidence for feedforward activation of phonological representations in the nontarget language, as well as feedback activation of these phonological representations from semantic representations. Results are interpreted within the more recent Bilingual Interactive Activation (BIA+) framework.

The impact of pointing on the short-term memory (STM) of heterophonic homographs

This study entailed two short-term memory (STM) experiments investigating the importance of vowel diacritics for the temporary retention of three distinct Hebrew word list types: heterophonic homographs, non-homographs and homophonic homographs. Eighty university students participated in each experiment, with half of them tested with word lists presented in fully pointed (voweled) Hebrew and the other half given the word lists in unpointed Hebrew (with vowel diacritics removed). In Experiment 1, all stimulus materials were presented in print script. Experiment 2 was an exact replication, except that stimulus materials were in cursive Hebrew. Findings from both experiments indicated that, overall, the presence of vowel diacritics had no facilitating effect on participants’ quantitative or qualitative STM performance. In fact, when reading print script, pointing was found to be detrimental to STM recall for all three investigated word categories. Findings are discussed with respect to a dual-route reading model.

Hemispheric asymmetries in meaning selection: Evidence from the disambiguation of homophonic vs. heterophonic homographs

Research investigating hemispheric asymmetries in meaning selection using homophonic homographs (e.g., bank), suggests that the left hemisphere (LH) quickly selects contextually relevant meanings, whereas the right hemisphere (RH) maintains a broader spectrum of meanings including those that are contextually irrelevant (e.g., Faust & Chiarello, 1998). The present study investigated cerebral asymmetries in maintaining the multiple meanings of two types of Hebrew homographs: homophonic homographs and heterophonic homographs (e.g., tear). Participants read homographs preceded by a biasing, or a non-biasing sentential context, and performed a lexical decision task on targets presented laterally, 1000ms after the onset of the sentence-final ambiguous prime. Targets were related to either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of the preceding homograph, or unrelated to it. When targets were presented in the LVF/RH, dominant and subordinate meanings, of both types of homographs, were retained only when they were supported by context. In a non-biasing context, only dominant meanings of homophonic homographs were retained. Alternatively, when targets were presented in the RVF/LH, priming effects for homophonic homographs were only evident when meanings were supported by both context and frequency (i.e., when context favored the dominant meaning). In contrast, heterophonic homographs resulted in activation of dominant meanings, in all contexts, and activation of subordinate meanings, only in subordinate-biasing contexts. The results challenge the view that a broader spectrum of meanings is maintained in the right than in the left hemisphere and suggest that hemispheric differences in the time course of meaning selection (or decay) may be modulated by phonology.

Semantic asymmetries are modulated by phonological asymmetries: Evidence from the disambiguation of homophonic versus heterophonic homographs

The present study investigated cerebral asymmetries in accessing multiple meanings of two types of homographs: homophonic homographs (e.g., bank) and heterophonic homographs (e.g., tear). Participants read homographs preceded by either a biasing or a non-biasing sentential context and performed a lexical decision on lateralized targets presented 150 ms after onset of the sentence-final ambiguous prime. Targets were either related to the dominant or the subordinate meaning of the preceding homograph or were unrelated to it. In the case of homophonic homographs – our results converge with previous findings: both activation and selection processes are faster in the LH than in the RH. Importantly, however, in the case of heterophonic homographs – opposite asymmetries were found. These results suggest that semantic asymmetries are modulated by phonology. They are discussed in the context of a model of functional architecture of reading in the two hemispheres in which orthography, phonology and semantics are fully interconnected in the LH, whereas in the RH, orthography and phonology are not directly connected, such that phonological processes are mediated by semantics.

Is the movement deficit in syntactic SLI related to traces or to thematic role transfer?

Children with Syntactic Specific Language Impairment (S-SLI) have difficulties understanding object relative clauses, which have been ascribed to a deficit in syntactic movement. The current study explores the nature of the deficit in movement, and specifically whether it is related to a deficit in the construction of syntactic structure and traces, or whether the structure is constructed correctly but the transfer of thematic roles from the trace is impaired. This question was addressed using reading aloud and paraphrasing of object relatives that included noun–verb heterophonic homographs after the trace. Because the correct reading of homographs as noun or verb critically hinges on the identification of their syntactic position, readers who cannot construct traces are expected to read homographs incorporated after the trace incorrectly. The participants were 15 Hebrew-speaking children aged 9.3 to 14.6 with S-SLI and 50 typically developing children. The children with S-SLI read the homographs after the trace correctly but failed to interpret the object relatives, making thematic role errors. The results suggest that in S-SLI, at least for school-aged children, syntactic structure and traces are created, but the assignment of thematic roles from the trace to the moved element is impaired, leading to a deficit in the comprehension of movement-derived sentences.

Do people with agrammatic aphasia understand verb movement?

Background: Many studies report that the comprehension of sentences derived by movement of phrases is impaired in agrammatism. However, only few studies have explored the comprehension of sentences that involve a movement of the verb. In several languages, the verb can or should move to the second position of a sentence, creating VSO sentences like “Yesterday ate the girl a watermelon” from an SVO sentence. Previous studies of comprehension of verb movement either allowed the patients to use a strategy, or used grammaticality judgement tasks, which probably tap different abilities from interpretation tasks. The research was supported by a research grant from the National Institute for Psychobiology in Israel (Friedmann 2004‐5‐2b), and by the Joint German–Israeli Research Program grant (Friedmann GR‐01791). Many thanks to Ronit Szterman for her participation in the development of this experiment and to Esther Ruigendijk for her helpful comments. Aims: The present study tested the comprehension of sentences with verb movement to second position in agrammatism using a novel sentence type that prevented participants from employing strategy‐based comprehension. Comprehension was tested using sentences with verb–noun homophones and homographs. In general, the choice between the noun and the verb meaning of homophones and homographs relies on the construction of the syntactic structure of the sentence, and the syntactic role of the ambiguous word. In the current study, we used sentences in which the ambiguous word was placed at the object position, such as “Yesterday caught the bat flies in the garden” (literally transcribed into English). In order to understand whether it is a verb or a noun (whether the bat in this sentence flies, or whether it catches flies), comprehension of the relation between the moved verb and its object is required. Thus, these sentences might shed light on whether individuals with agrammatism can understand verb movement. Methods & Procedures: participants were six Hebrew‐speaking individuals with agrammatic aphasia. In Experiment 1 they paraphrased auditorily presented sentences with homophones; in Experiment 2 they read aloud and then paraphrased written sentences with heterophonic homographs. Both experiments also included, in addition to the target sentences with verb movement, matched sentences with the same homographs and homophones that did not include verb movement. Experiment 1 included 51 sentences, Experiment 2 included 48 sentences per participant. Outcomes & Results: The individuals with agrammatic aphasia failed to read and paraphrase the sentences with verb movement. They either took the object to be the verb, read the moved verb incorrectly, said they did not understand the sentence, or said that there were two parts of the sentence that did not connect. Matched sentences with the same homophones and homographs without verb movement were comprehended significantly better. Normal subjects performed correctly in all conditions. Conclusions: Not only is the comprehension of movement of phrases impaired in agrammatism, but also the comprehension of sentences derived by verb movement.

Consistency effects on lexical decision and naming of two-character Chinese words

This study with three experiments examined thenotion inherent in the Interactive ConstituencyModel of Perfetti and colleagues [Perfetti, C.A.,Liu, Y. & Tan, L.H. (2002) In H.S.R. Kao, C.K. Leong D Perfetti, C.A. & Tan, L.H. (1999) In J. Wang,A.W. Inhoff & H.-C. Chen (Eds.), ReadingChinese script: A cognitive analysis (pp. 115–134).Mahwah, New Hersey: Lawrence Erlbaum] thatin reading 2-character Chinese wordsphonology is activated at the character levelrather than at the word level. Specifically,the effect of phonological inconsistency(multiple pronunciations) of constituentcharacters on the visual recognition of2-character Chinese words found by Tan andPerfetti (Experiment 2) [(1999) Journal ofExperimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, andCognition, 25, 382–393] was furthertested in 2 lexical decision experiments (1and 2a) with sample sizes of 42 and 47 nativeCantonese-speaking Chinese university students.Using the same stimulus materials with someneeded slight variations, the two experimentsfound the target items with the constituentinconsistent characters were processed fasterthan the control two-character words withconsistent characters and this inconsistencyeffect of heterophonic homographs would stillbe compatible with character-level phonology. The words with the consistent constituentcharacter on the left (inconsistency on theright constituent) were processed faster thanthose with the consistent constituent characteron the right (inconsistency on the leftconstituent). In Experiment 2b the control orconsistent words were named faster than thecorresponding inconsistent words and there wasno left–right positional difference for theinconsistency. Taken together, the two lexicaldecision experiments and the naming experimentuphold the generality of character-levelconsistency effect of heterophonic homographs,even though there are some slight variationsfrom the original study.

Phonetic recoding of phonologically ambiguous printed words.

Speech detection and matching simultaneously presented printed and spoken words were used to examine phonologic and phonetic processing of Hebrew heterophonic homographs. Subjects detected a correspondence between an ambiguous letter string and the amplitude envelopes of both dominant and subordinate phonological alternatives. Similar effects were obtained when the homographs were phonologically disambiguated by adding vowel marks. The matching of the unpointed printed forms of heterophonic homographs to the dominant and subordinate spoken alternatives presented auditorily was as fast as matching the pointed unambiguous forms to the respective spoken words. This outcome was not obtained when print and speech were not presented simultaneously. These results suggest that printed heterophonic homographs activate the two spoken alternatives they represent and provide further confirmation for fast phonetic recoding in reading.

Processing phonological and semantic ambiguity: evidence from semantic priming at different SOAs.

Disambiguation of heterophonic and homophonic homographs was investigated in Hebrew using semantic priming. Ambiguous primes were followed by unambiguous targets at 100 ms, 250 ms, and 750 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). Lexical decision for targets related to the dominant phonological alternatives of heterophonic homographs were facilitated at all SOAs. Targets related to subordinate alternatives were facilitated only at SOAs of 250 ms or longer. When the primes were homophonic homographs, semantic relationship facilitated lexical decision of targets at all SOAs regardless of the dominance of the meaning to which the targets were related. These data can be accounted for by assuming multiple lexical entries for heterophonic homographs, single lexical entries for homophonic homographs, and phonological mediation of accessing meanings. Language-specific factors probably account for the long-lasting activation of subordinate meanings.