Book Chapter Published

The Effects of L1-Derived Syllabified Representations on Lexical Decision in L2 English Among Native Speakers of Korean: An Exploratory Study

Kim, S.-A.*, Schanding, B., & Pae, H. K. (2025). The Effects of L1-Derived Syllabified Representations on Lexical Decision in L2 English Among Native Speakers of Korean: An Exploratory Study. In Pae, H. K., Winskel, H. & Kim, S. Y. (Eds.), Handbook on the Korean Language and Literacy: Insights into Hangul and Text Processing, 471-495. Springer.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-88087-2_24

Abstract

Although sublexical segmentation involved in visual word recognition has been extensively investigated in reading science, how L1 orthography and phonology affect syllabic parsing in L2 word recognition is still an open question. This study examined how efficiently native Korean readers recognized English polysyllabic words that showed artificially syllabified letter strings based on Korean and English phonology. Forty Korean-native university students participated in a lexical decision task. Experimental conditions included words that were broken down based on Korean-derived syllabification, English-derived syllabification, and random syllabification. Results showed that Korean participants were not particularly disrupted by artificial spaces embedded within English polysyllabic words as long as the space was based on Korean phonology and orthography. In contrast, they took extra time in letter strings with spaces that were shown randomly. These results suggest the orthographic and phonological properties of L1 are likely to affect L2 lexical decision.

Keywords

Native speakers of Korean, Korean syllabic units, English syllabic units, L1-derived phonology, L2 English