The cognate facilitation effect in bilingual speech processing; the case of Russian-English bilingualism

Cahiers linguistics d’Ottawa. - 2004. Т. 32. С. 108-121. Abstract: Cross-language cognates (words with similar form and meaning in different languages) are of special interest for designing a model of the bilingual lexicon because there is a possibility that they may have overlapping representations between the two languages of a bilingual. Among other effects related to cognates, the cognate facilitation effect was discovered: bilinguals produce and recognize cognates faster than non-cognates. One possibility to explain the cognate facilitation effect is through shared/overlapping representations of cognates and the word frequency effect. Since using a pair of cognates in two languages requires accessing (almost) the same phonological form in connection to (almost) the same concept, the overall frequency of a cognate increases. In a frequency rating task on English words, Russian-English bilinguals rated the frequencies of cognates significantly higher than English monolinguals did. There was no such difference between the bilinguals' and the monolinguals' frequency ratings for non-cognates. Therefore, bilinguals do perceive cognates as having higher frequencies.