Cholin, J. 1 , Hantsch, A. 1 , Monahan, P. J. 1 & Carreiras, M. 1, 2, 3
1 Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, BCBL, Donostia, Spain
2 Ikerbasque Foundation, Bilbao, Spain
3 Department of Basque Philology, Universidad de País Vasco, Spain
The ability to produce language so effortlessly has motivated the assumption that we store syllable-sized motor programs that are accessed during online production. High-frequency (HF) syllables are produced more quickly than low-frequency (LF) syllables, results taken to support the existence of a mental syllabary (e.g., Carreiras & Perea, 2004; Cholin et al., in press; Cholin et al., 2006; Cholin & Levelt, 2009; Laganaro & Alario, 2006). The literature thus far, however, has almost exclusively used monolingual participants, leaving open the question of the nature of such representations in a bilingual system. Testing French-Spanish bilinguals, Alario, et al. (2010) presented evidence that suggests independent syllabaries for early bilinguals and shared syllabic representations for late bilinguals. Using a syllable-association learning task (Cholin et al., 2006), we first measured monolingual Spanish speakers’ production times to HF and LF Spanish syllables. Consistent with previous findings, HF syllables were produced more quickly than LF syllables. Subsequently, we tested Spanish-Basque bilinguals on the same materials, but surprisingly found that LF syllables were produced more quickly. Considering the Basque frequencies of the syllables shared between Spanish and Basque in our materials, a post-hoc correlational analysis suggests that the Basque frequencies significantly contribute to the directionality of the response times.