Cognate and meaning frequency effects on homonym processing

Purpose: This study investigated the influence of L1 co-activation and meaning frequency of homonyms on L2 lexical access of Brazilian Portuguese–English bilinguals during an L2 meaning decision task. Design: Eighty-four university students completed a meaning decision task—with cognate homonyms—a meaning recognition task, a Language History Questionnaire, and an L2 proficiency test. The meaning decision task was composed of 128 prime words followed by one out of three possible targets: related to the dominant meaning, related to the subordinate one, or unrelated. Independent variables were cognate status (64 cognate × 64 non-cognate words), homonym status (64 homonym × 64 non-homonyms), prime-sharedness (16 dominant meaning shared words × 16 subordinate meaning shared words), and target-relatedness (64 related to dominant meaning × 64 related to subordinate meaning × 64 unrelated words). Dependent variables were reaction times and accuracy. Data and analysis: Data were analyzed using linear mixed effect models in R. Findings: Results showed that, in this sample of bilinguals, processing of target words related to the meaning of the prime was confounded when primes were homonyms. In general, this interference was not decreased by the co-activation of cognate words across languages. Accuracy scores benefited from cognate status only when no ambiguity was present. Word processing was faster and more accurate when target words were related to the dominant meaning of the homonym prime, which shared this same meaning across languages. Originality: L1 co-activation via cognate words was not enough to decrease homonym interference effect in L2 word processing. Implications: This study lends support for a non-selective bilingual lexical access view and for frequency approaches during L2 word recognition. It also indicates limitations of the cognate facilitation effect.