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Orthographic–phonological links in the lexicon: When lexical and sublexical information conflict

2004; Springer Science+Business Media; Volume: 17; Issue: 1/2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1023/b

1573-0905

Jeesun Kim, Marcus Taft, Chris Davis,

Phonetics and Phonology Research

At what level of orthographic representation isphonology linked in the lexicon? Is it at thewhole word level, the syllable level, letterlevel, etc.? This question can be addressed bycomparing the two scripts used in Korean,logographic hanja and alphabetic/syllabichangul, on a task where judgments must be madeabout the phonology of a visually presentedword. Three experiments are reported that useda ``homophone decision task'' and manipulated thesublexical relationship between orthography andphonology in hanja and hangul, as well as thelexical status of the stimuli. For both hanjaand hangul word targets, subjects showed a higherror rate in correctly judging that there wasanother word identically pronounced with itwhen sublexical information was non-supportiveof whole-word homophony. It is concluded thatthe process of making a homophone decisionreflects the relationship between orthographyand phonology as mediated through sublexicalunits activated from orthography to phonologyand vice versa (called``Orthography–Phonology–Orthography Rebound'' or``OPO Rebound''). The results are explained anddiscussed within a multilevel interactiveactivation model with orthographic units linkedto phonological units at each level.