The effects of L1 orthography on L2 word recognition: A study of American and Chinese learners of Japanese

Lexical judgment tests using Japanese kana (a syllabic script: hiragana and katakana) were performed on 45 English and 17 Chinese speaking learners of Japanese. Visual familiarity and word length in words were controlled to examine phonological/visual dependence in word recognition. Visual familiarity was tested using three types of word stimuli: visually familiar, visually unfamiliar and nonword. Visually familiar words were kana words written in a conventional script (katakana words which are conventionally written in katakana and hiragana words which are conventionally written in hiragana). Visually unfamiliar words were written in an unconventional script (katakana words which are conventionally written in hiragana and hiragana words which are conventionally written in katakana). Nonwords were pronounceable, but not actual Japanese words. The stimuli word length varied from 2 to 5 kana letters. English and Chinese subject responses were compared in terms of reaction time and error rate. According to the hypothesis, it was predicted that (1) subject dependence on visual information in words would cause increased response times for unfamiliar word stimuli, and (2) subject dependence on the phonological information in words would cause increased reaction times as word length increased.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Chikamatsu, Nobuko

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mack, Molly

• Education, Language and Literature
• Language, Linguistics
• Education, Educational Psychology

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1995 Chikamatsu, Nobuko

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9543556
(UMI)AAI9543556

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/22999