The representation of “false cognates” in the bilingual lexicon

The results of repetition priming studies with homographs such asbank suggest that semantic constraints restrict priming to the specific meaning invoked during the study phase. Cross-language priming studies with “false cognates” (words with similar form but unrelated meanings) suggest that form similarity may be sufficient to support repetition priming, and they do not therefore support this claim. The relevant studies have used language cues (e.g., seeing the word ESTATE in the context of other Italian words) as distinct from semantic cues (e.g.,inverno—estate) to constrain meaning, however, so that interpretation is correspondingly uncertain. The experiment described in this paper was designed to answer this question: Does sequential exposure to the English word pairmanor—estate during the study phase facilitate lexical decision to the second of these words during sequential exposure to the Italian word pairinverno—estate (i.e., winter-summer) during the test phase of the experiment? In the experiment reported below, interpretation of false cognates was constrained by meaning rather than language, and cross-language repetition priming was eliminated for false cognates. The results suggest that lexical representation in bilinguals is organized along morphological lines rather than by language.