Cross-Linguistic Phonological Similarity and Word Recall: A Study of Advanced Chinese-Speaking Learners of Japanese

Abstract

This study examined how cross-linguistic phonological similarity between Chinese and Japanese affects the recall of Japanese kanji words in Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese. In Experiment 1, Chinese-Japanese cognates differing in phonological similarity (high vs. low) were used as stimuli, while semantic overlap across the two languages was also considered (same-meaning cognates, partially overlapping cognates, and false cognates, defined here as Chinese-Japanese same-script words with different meanings). Participants were instructed to memorize words while subvocally articulating them in Japanese, followed by a written free recall task. A control group of native Japanese speakers was also included to examine whether lexical properties of the stimuli affected recall performance. The results showed that, among learners of Japanese, words with high cross-linguistic phonological similarity were recalled better than words with low phonological similarity, regardless of the degree of semantic overlap. In contrast, no significant effects of phonological similarity or semantic overlap were observed in the native Japanese control group. Experiment 2 further examined the effect of semantic overlap within the low phonological similarity condition in Experiment 1 by including additional stimulus items. The results showed that same-meaning cognates were recalled better than partially overlapping cognates, whereas no significant differences were found between same-meaning cognates and false cognates, or between partially overlapping cognates and false cognates. These findings indicate that, under a memory task involving subvocal reading in Japanese, cross-linguistic phonological similarity condition, the lower recall performance for partially overlapping cognates compared with same-meaning cognates suggests that, for partially overlapping cognates, competition may arise between using L1 semantic representations as recall cues and maintaining the words as distinct L2 semantic representations, making the cues available for retention and recall less stable.