Abstract Bilinguals and multilinguals commonly encounter words in their multiple languages which share some linguistic aspects. Among those are interlingual homographs, or words that have the exact same orthography in two different languages. The current study examined, through a semantic judgment task in English with ERP recording, how multilinguals (speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, English and German) accessed the meanings of interlingual homographs that belonged to their dominant and non-dominant foreign languages compared to a control group of Brazilian Portuguese-English bilinguals. The findings demonstrated that multilinguals were slower to respond to the English-German interlingual homographs as compared to control stimuli (no homographs). The results also demonstrated that, when the interlingual homographs were semantically related to their targets in the non-target language, there were significantly more errors and a higher RT than in unrelated conditions. Additionally, only the bilinguals presented the typical N400 effect for unrelated conditions, suggesting that the co-activation of the non-target language due to interlingual homographs modulated this ERP in the multilingual group. Our results provide support for the Bilingual Interactive Activation plus model and suggest that literature findings on interference between first and second languages also hold for second and third languages.

Zusammenfassung Zweisprachige und mehrsprachige Menschen stoßen in ihren verschiedenen Sprachen häufig auf Wörter, die einige linguistische Aspekte gemeinsam haben. Dazu gehören interlingualen Homographen, d.h. Wörter, die sich in zwei unterschiedlichen Sprachen durch genau dieselbe Orthographie auszeichnen. In der vorliegenden Studie wurde anhand einer semantischen Beurteilungsaufgabe in Englisch mit ERP-Aufzeichnung untersucht, wie mehrsprachige Personen (Sprecher des brasilianischen Portugiesisch, des Englischen und des Deutschen) im Vergleich zu einer Kontrollgruppe von brasilianischen Portugiesisch-Englisch-Zweisprachigen auf die Bedeutung von interlingualen Homographen zugreifen, die zu ihrer dominanten und nicht-dominanten Fremdsprache gehören. Die Ergebnisse zeigten, dass mehrsprachige Personen im Vergleich zu den Kontrollstimuli (keine Homographen) langsamer auf die interlingualen Homographen Englisch-Deutsch reagierten. Die Ergebnisse zeigten auch, dass, wenn die interlingualen Homographen semantisch mit ihren Zielen in der Nicht-Zielsprache verwandt waren, signifikant mehr Fehler und eine höhere RT auftraten als in nicht verwandten Bedingungen. Darüber hinaus zeigten nur die Bilingualen den typischen N400-Effekt für nicht verwandte Bedingungen, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Koaktivierung der Nicht-Zielsprache durch interlinguale Homographen diese ERP in der mehrsprachigen Gruppe modulierte. Unsere Ergebnisse stützen das Bilingual Interactive Activation plus Modell und legen nahe, dass die Literaturergebnisse zur Interferenz zwischen Erst- und Zweitsprache auch für die Zweit- und Drittsprache gelten.

Resumo Neste artigo apresentamos os resultados de um experimento conduzido com o objetivo de investigar o efeito de cognatos triplos no acesso lexical de falantes de inglês (L3), alemão (L2), e português brasileiro (L1). Os participantes desempenharam uma tarefa de leitura, contendo 60 sentenças experimentais com as seguintes palavras críticas: cognatos triplos, cognatos duplos entre o português brasileiro e o inglês, e cognatos duplos entre o alemão e o inglês. Os movimentos dos olhos dos participantes foram monitorados enquanto eles desempenhavam a tarefa. As medidas de primeira fixação e tempo de primeira leitura foram analisadas. Os resultados sugerem que os cognatos triplos foram processados mais rapidamente do que seus respectivos controles para as medidas de primeira fixação (M: 264/311ms (cognato/controle); p=0,03) e primeira leitura (M: 407/448ms (cognato/controle); p=0,05), o que foi interpretado como evidência de um acesso lexical não seletivo e de um léxico integrado para as línguas do multilíngue. Adicionalmente, os resultados contribuem para a literatura sobre acesso lexical de multilíngues, favorecendo a visão de que todas as línguas do multilíngue se encontram ativadas, mesmo quando o falante tem a intenção de usar apenas uma dessas línguas.

Abstract In this paper, the results of an experimental study carried out in order to investigate the effect of triple cognates in the lexical access of speakers of English (L3), German (L2), and Brazilian Portuguese (L1) is presented. Participants performed a reading task, containing 60 experimental sentences with the following critical words: triple cognates, double cognates between Brazilian Portuguese and English, and double cognates between German and English. Participants’ eye movements were recorded while they performed the task. The measures of first fixation and first reading pass times were analyzed. The results suggested that triple cognates were processed faster than their respective controls in first fixation (M: 264/311ms (cognate/control); p=0,03) and first pass (M: 407/448ms (cognate/control); p=0,05), which was interpreted as evidence of a nonselective lexical access and an integrated lexicon for the multilinguals’ languages. In addition, these results contribute to the literature of lexical access of multilinguals, favoring the view that all the languages of a multilingual are active even when the speaker intends to use only one language.