| In this study of non-native reading aloud, subjects with L1 English, L2 Spanish, and L3 Brazilian Portuguese were asked to read words that are spelled identically in their L2 and L3 but are pronounced differently. Each of these "homographic heterophones" was primed in either the L2 or the L3, and its subsequent pronunciation was assessed for context appropriateness. Participants were found to produce many more context-inappropriate pronunciations in L3 context than in L2 context, supporting the Foreign- Language Effect hypothesis (Meisel, 1983; Hammarberg, 2001); priming was not found to have a significant effect on pronunciation. The observation of mixed pronunciations, or single words produced partially with L2 and partially with L3 phonology, is incorporated into the development of a model of reading in non-native languages that allows for whole lexical representations to be broken into sublexical units when reading aloud, contrary to Coltheart (1993). |
