When sentence meaning biases another language: an eye-tracking investigation of cross-language activation during second language reading

Bilingual adults use semantic context to manage cross-language activation while reading. An open question is how lexical, contextual and individual differences simultaneously constrain this process. We used eye-tracking to investigate how 83 French–English bilinguals read L2-English sentences containing interlingual homographs (chat) and control words (pact). Between subjects, sentences biased target language or non-target language meanings (English = conversation; French = feline). Both conditions contained unbiased control sentences. We examined the impact of word- and participant-level factors (cross-language frequency and L2 age of acquisition/AoA and reading entropy, respectively). There were three key results: (1) L2 readers showed global homograph interference in late-stage reading (total reading times) when English sentence contexts biased non-target French homograph meanings; (2) interference increased as homographs’ non-target language frequency increased and L2 AoA decreased; (3) increased reading entropy globally facilitated early-stage reading (gaze durations) in the non-target language bias condition. Thus, cross-language activation during L2 reading is constrained by multiple factors.