THE INFLUENCE OF NON-PHONETIC FACTORS ON THE FORM OF L2 LEXICAL ENTRIES: RESPONSE TO CUTLER AND WEBER

Lisa Davidson
Department of Linguistics, New York University, New York

ID 1780
[full paper]

Cutler and Weber argue that L2 lexical representations must incorporate both abstract and episodic information. In this paper, the nature of non-phonetic information that is useful to L2 learners is further explored, with a focus on orthographic and minimal pair data. It is argued this type of information is useful to L2 listeners because it provides them with an overt incentive to distinguish non-native phonemic or phonotactic categories. However, it is noted that not all phonemic categories may be equally learnable in L2 acquisition, which is a challenge for episodic models of lexical storage.