The Processing Mechanism for Japanese Kanji Words in Learners of Japanese

Concerning Interlingual Similarities in Orthography, Phonology and Semantics

Abstract

This paper examines how learners of Japanese process kanji words in Japanese based on the results of word recognition research in the fields of cognitive psychology and second language acquisition. Recent studies of monolingual and bilingual individuals have shown that exposure to a target word activates not only the semantic representation of the word itself, but multiple related lexical meanings as well, which can both enhance and interfere with processing of the target word. These effects are to be expected with learners of Japanese as well. What are the characteristics of words for which this sort of interaction most noticeably occurs between languages in learners of Japanese? Under what conditions does it occur? This paper discusses these questions based on an overview of previous research and closes in on the mechanism of information processing in learners of Japanese and other languages.