Orthographic–phonological links in the lexicon: When lexical and sublexical information conflict

At what level of orthographic representation is phonology linked in the lexicon? Is it at the whole word level, the syllable level, letter level, etc.? This question can be addressed by comparing the two scripts used in Korean, logographic hanja and alphabetic/syllabic hangul, on a task where judgments must be made about the phonology of a visually presented word. Three experiments are reported that used a “homophone decision task” and manipulated the sublexical relationship between orthography and phonology in hanja and hangul, as well as the lexical status of the stimuli. For both hanja and hangul word targets, subjects showed a high error rate in correctly judging that there was another word identically pronounced with it when sublexical information was non-supportive of whole-word homophony. It is concluded that the process of making a homophone decision reflects the relationship between orthography and phonology as mediated through sublexical units activated from orthography to phonology and vice versa (called “Orthography–Phonology–Orthography Rebound” or “OPO Rebound”). The results are explained and discussed within a multilevel interactive activation model with orthographic units linked to phonological units at each level.