AUTHOR=Laure Yael , Armon-Lotem Sharon 

TITLE=Hebrew-L2 speakers process auditory templatic words through their L1 processing mechanism with awareness of L2

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1164510

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1164510

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Bilingualism involves cross-linguistic influence (CLI) prompted by communicative function, which impacts the activation of the bilingual’s L1/L2 language processing mechanisms. The current study examined the extent of CLI when semantic information is reduced. Semitic languages are known for their templatic words composed of intertwined sub-lexical root and template morphemes, entailing nonlinear morphological processing. As the roots constitute of a semantic core, comprehension was found to impact morphological processing among Hebrew-L2 readers. Herein, we assessed the processing mechanism activated among adult Hebrew-L2 bilinguals in an auditory rhyme judgment task that requires linear processing. The task was provided with Hebrew templatic word pairs comprising accentuated (meta)linguistic information irrespective of semantics: phonological cooccurrence restrictions (root), grammatical information of vocalic melodies (template), and contrastive stress. We hypothesized that CLI in Hebrew-L2 speakers would be reflected in low accuracy rates in rhyming pairs when linguistic information is accentuated, indicating distraction from the linear processing due to activation levels of the L2 processing mechanism caused by competing linguistic cues drawn of the transferred linguistic information. We compared the performance of adult Hebrew-L1 (58) with Hebrew-L2 (54) speakers with Semitic and non-Semitic L1. The findings showed that Hebrew-L2 speakers performed the task using their L1 processing mechanism with varying activation levels of L2, showing awareness of the morphological processing due to the vocalic melody for non-Semitic L1 and awareness of contrastive stress for Semitic-L1. The results confirm CLI also when semantics is reduced, elucidating how much CLI modulates the bilingual’s language processing mechanism.