NON-SELECTIVE ACCESS OF PHONOLOGY BY KOREAN-CHINESE BILINGUALS

Abstract

This study investigated the bilingual phonological processes with bi-scriptal readers of Korean language, Korean-Chinese. Three types of same-different matching between the prime and target were compared. The main result was that the condition of semantically not related but phonologically related (S-P+; e.g., “水/su/[a homophone of the prime has the same meaning as the target] and 손/son/”) was slower than the condition of the condition of semantically and phonological not related (S-P-). The critical point was on whether the semantically related word with the target (i.e., 手/su/) can be activated by the phonological form of the prime. These results indicate that phonological access is nonselectively activated in Korean-Chinese bilingual processing. The implication for bilingual phonological recoding was discussed.