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On the production of interlingual homophones: delayed naming and increased

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 Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

ISSN: 2327-3798 (Print) 2327-3801 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/plcp21

On the production of interlingual homophones:

delayed naming and increased N400

Ingrid Christoffels, Kalinka Timmer, Lesya Ganushchak & Wido La Heij

To cite this article: Ingrid Christoffels, Kalinka Timmer, Lesya Ganushchak & Wido La Heij
(2015): On the production of interlingual homophones: delayed naming and increased N400,
Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2015.1120877

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 LANGUAGE, COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE, 2015
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2015.1120877

On the production of interlingual homophones: delayed naming and increased

N400
Ingrid Christoffelsa,b, Kalinka Timmerc, Lesya Ganushchakd,e and Wido La Heija,f
a
Cognitive Psychology Unit, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands; bCentre of Expertise for
Vocational Education, ’s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands; cDepartment of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; dCentre for
Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands; eEducation and Child Studies, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden,
The Netherlands; fLeiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Bilinguals take longer to identify interlingual homophones than control words. For example, Dutch– Received 12 December 2014
English bilinguals take longer to identify an English word like “leaf” ([li:f]), a homophone of the Accepted 9 November 2015
Dutch word “lief” ([lif]; meaning “sweet”), than to identify a control word like “branch”. This
KEYWORDS
homophone-delay effect, observed with both visual and auditory presentation, has been Bilingualism; homophones;
interpreted as evidence in favour of language non-selective lexical access. The present article word production; N400; P200
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examines whether a homophone effect is also present in word production. Theoretically,

homophone production may profit from feedback from a phonemic level back to a lexical level,
but may suffer from a semantic conflict during a process of output monitoring. In line with the
latter view, the results show (a) a delay in the production of homophones in the second
language, (b) an increased error percentage in the production of homophones in both the first
and second language, (c) a reduction in P200 amplitude in the production of homophones in
the second language and (d) an increase in the N400 in the production of homophones in both
languages of the bilingual.

Research on word comprehension in bilinguals has pro-
vided ample evidence that activation of lexical represen-
tations is not restricted to a single language (“language
non-selective access”; e.g. Costa, Miozzo, & Caramazza,
1999; Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 1998; Van Heuven, Dijkstra,
& Grainger, 1998). For example, in a Dutch lexical
decision task, Dutch–English bilinguals are slower in
recognising interlingual homographs like the word
“room” (meaning “cream” in Dutch; Macizo, Bajo, &
Martin, 2010) and also slower in recognising interlingual
homophones like the Dutch “lief” ([lif], meaning “pre-
cious” or “sweet” as in “sweet girl”, pronounced similar
to the English “leaf”, [li:f]), in comparison to matched
controls.
There is also evidence, although more disputed, that
lexical access is also non-selective during language pro-
duction in bilinguals. Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot, and
Schreuder (1998) asked native speakers of Dutch to
name pictures in their foreign language English. These
pictures (e.g. of a mountain; Dutch name: “berg”) were
accompanied by various distractor words, including
words phonologically related to the Dutch name of the
picture (e.g. the English word “bench”) and unrelated
words. The picture-naming times were significantly
larger in the former condition than in the latter, which
was interpreted as evidence that the Dutch name of
the picture was activated in parallel with the English
name. Moreover, Colomé (2001) showed that in a
phoneme-monitoring task on the Catelan names of
target pictures, Catelan–Spanish bilinguals needed
more time to reject a phoneme when that phoneme
was the first consonant of the Spanish name of the
picture compared to an unrelated phoneme (see also
Hermans, Ormel, van Besselaar, & van Hell, 2011; Kroll,
Bobb, & Wodniecka, 2006, for discussion). Finally, the
“cognate facilitation effect”, the observation that pictures
with cognate names (names similar in orthography and
phonology) in the two languages of a bilingual are
named faster than pictures of non-cognates, has also
been interpreted as evidence supporting parallel acti-
vation of L1 and L2 words in language production by
bilinguals (e.g. Acheson, Ganushchak, Christoffels, &
Hagoort, 2012; Christoffels, Firk, & Schiller, 2007; Christof-
fels, de Groot, & Kroll, 2006; Costa, Caramazza, & Sebas-
tián Galles, 2000; Hoshino & Kroll, 2008; Poarch & van
Hell, 2012).

CONTACT Wido La Heij laheij@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

© 2015 Taylor & Francis
 2 I. CHRISTOFFELS ET AL
Figure 1. Assumed processes underlying the cognate facilitation effect (left panel) and a possible homophone facilitation effect (right
panel) in naming pictures by a Dutch–English bilingual.
Costa et al. (2000) proposed an account of the
cognate facilitation effect that is illustrated in the left
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panel of Figure 1. According to this interpretation,
when Dutch–English bilinguals name a picture of – for
example – a cat, the lexical representations of the pic-
ture’s name in L1 and L2 become active and send acti-
vation to the corresponding phonemic representations.
In the case of a cognate (like the Dutch “kat” and the
English “cat”), the phonemic nodes that the two words
have in common are activated from two sources, and it
is this co-activation that is responsible for the observed
reduction in reaction time (RT) in comparison to
control words. Note that this facilitation effect results
from two processes: the feed-forward activation of the
lexical and phonemic representations of the cognate in
the non-response language and the feedback from the
phoneme representations to the lexical representation
of the non-response word, and back again to the phone-
mic nodes.
In the present study, we focus on interlingual homo-
phones: words in the first and second language that
have a different meaning, but a very similar pronuncia-
tion. An example is given above: the English word
“leaf”, which is very similar in pronunciation to the
Dutch word “lief” (“sweet”). Although these words do
not have a conceptual representation in common, homo-
phones may also profit from the assumed feedback from
the phonemic nodes back to the lexical representations,
as assumed by Costa et al. (2000). This is illustrated in the
right panel of Figure 1. As a result of this feedback loop,
pictures with homophonic names may take less time to
be named than non-homophonic controls.
However, the production of homophones might also
be affected by a different process that might induce a
delay in comparison to control words. Models of
language production often assume that in a late stage
of language production, just before articulation, an
available response-ready representation is checked
(“monitored”) for its appropriateness (e.g. Hartsuiker &
Kolk, 2001; Levelt, 1989; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999).
In the influential “perception-based approach” of moni-
toring (Postma, 2000), this process is assumed to
involve the same mechanism employed in understand-
ing other-produced language: the speech-comprehen-
sion system. In the case of picture naming, monitoring
might involve a comparison between the conceptual
representation of the to-be-named picture (e.g. LEAF)
and the conceptual representation of the word that is
about to be produced (e.g. the concept corresponding
to the phoneme string [li:f]). In the case of a homophone
like [li:f], the word that is about to be produced may acti-
vate two concepts, corresponding to LEAF and SWEET,
the latter one being incongruent with the target
concept. Resolving this ambiguity probably takes time,
resulting in a delay in naming pictures with homophone
names.
If we assume that the response-ready representation
of a homophone is internally processed in a way
similar to externally provided auditory stimuli, relevant
information can be derived from auditory word recog-
nition in bilinguals. Although only few studies have
examined this process, there seems to be consensus
that – just as in visual word recognition – auditory
word recognition is language non-selective, even in a
monolingual context (e.g. Marian & Spivey, 2003;
Spivey & Marian, 1999). In a gating study, Grosjean
(1988) and Lagrou, Hartsuiker, and Duyck (2011) reported
that it took bilinguals longer to recognise interlingual
homophones than matched controls. Schulpen, Dijkstra,
Schriefers, and Hasper (2003) used gating and cross-
modal priming to study the recognition of homophones
in Dutch–English bilinguals. In the gating task, the
English homophones (L2) were most difficult to isolate,
followed by the Dutch homophones (L1). The control

words (L1 and L2) were easiest to isolate. Moreover, the
participants were less confident in their identification of
homophones, but only for the L2 words. The authors
concluded that “in auditory word recognition of L2
words by bilinguals phonologically similar words
compete for recognition” (p. 1170). The priming exper-
iments showed a similar result. Given these findings, it
is conceivable that also during the monitoring of self-
produced speech homophones are harder to process,
possibly due to competition at the lexical and/or concep-
tual level.
To the best of our knowledge, no studies have exam-
ined a possible homophone effect in word production.
The present study focused on this issue and had three
objectives: first, we determine whether in a Dutch–
English bilingual population, word production latencies
are affected by the homophone status of the response
word (homophone versus non-homophone control).
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Second, we examine both production in L1 (i.e. a Dutch
response word with an English homophone) and pro-
duction in L2 (i.e. an English response word with a
Dutch homophone). A difference between these con-
ditions, as observed in the study by Schulpen et al.
(2003), discussed above, might provide information
about the locus of the interference effect.
Finally, in a further attempt to understand the under-
lying mechanism, we measure event-related potentials
(ERPs). The timing of a homophone effect in ERPs provides
insight into the moment a possible conflict between
alternative readings arises. In picture naming, lexical
selection was estimated to take place in the time
window of 150–250 ms (Indefrey & Levelt, 2004). This
was confirmed by recent studies using electroencephalo-
gram (EEG) (e.g. Aristei, Melinger, & Rahman, 2011;
Ganushchak, Christoffels, & Schiller, 2011; Strijkers &
Costa, 2011; see Indefrey, 2011, for a review). In overt
picture naming, modulation of the P200 was related to
lexical retrieval (Costa, Strijkers, Martina, & Thierry, 2009).
In bilingual picture naming, Strijkers, Costa, and Thierry
(2010) reported that more positive P200 was elicited for
low- than high-frequency picture names, and for non-cog-
nates than cognates (form overlap between words in
different languages). If lexical selection somehow differs
when selecting an interlingual homophone, we would
expect to observe a modulation of the P200.
It is, however, also possible that lexical selection of a
homophone target is initially similar to a control word,
and that only after selection, the alternative reading
becomes activated. The resulting activation of conflicting
meanings of the word may be reflected by modulation of
the N400, a negative-going deflection in the ERP wave
peaking at about 400 ms after the stimulus onset. The
N400 has typically been associated with semantic
LANGUAGE, COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE 3
integration of words into context, and to meaning pro-
cessing in general (see Kutas & Federmeier, 2011, for a
review). The observation of a homophone effect on the
N400 could be viewed as supporting evidence for the
idea that the production of homophones involves a
semantic conflict.
Because homophone pairs are rare and often include
the names of rather abstract concepts (e.g. “leaf”, homo-
phone of the Dutch word “lief”, meaning sweet), picture
naming is not a suitable paradigm. Therefore, we
decided to use a word-translation task. Although word
translation differs from picture naming in that it involves
a word-comprehension component, it has many charac-
teristics of a production task: it has been shown to be
conceptually driven (La Heij, Hooglander, Kerling, & Van
der Velden, 1996) and – like picture naming – shows
both semantic interference (Bloem & La Heij, 2003;
Bloem, van den Boogaard, & La Heij, 2004; La Heij
et al., 1990) and phonological facilitation (Bloem & La
Heij, 2003; La Heij et al., 1990). Furthermore, an overt
translation task was previously successfully used in com-
bination with ERPs to investigate effects of interlingual
homographs (e.g. “room” in Dutch refers to CREAM) on
translation processes (Christoffels, Ganushchak, &
Koester, 2013). The authors showed that both the P200
and N400 were modulated for translation direction and
report a more negative N400 for interlingual homo-
graphs than for matched controls.
In the experiment reported here, we asked Dutch–
English bilinguals to translate Dutch words into the
English equivalent (“forward translation”) and to trans-
late English words into their Dutch equivalents (“back-
ward translation”). For instance, the Dutch word “blad”,
meaning “leaf”, had to be translated into the English
word “leaf”, which is a homophone of the Dutch “lief,”
meaning “sweet”). Note that the participant is presented
with words that are language specific. Only when produ-
cing the translation response, overlap in phonology is
present.
Method
Participants
Twenty-six Leiden University students (22 females, 19
right-handed) took part in the experiment. Participants
gave their written informed consent prior to participat-
ing in the study and received a small monetary reward
or course credits for participation. All participants were
native Dutch speakers with English as L2. Five partici-
pants were excluded from the data analysis: three
because of excessive artefacts in the EEG registration or
malfunctioning of the EEG equipment, two on the basis
 4 I. CHRISTOFFELS ET AL
of their responses on the language background ques-
tionnaire and vocabulary test.
The remaining 21 participants were on average 22.5
(SD: 4.2) years of age, and were proficient in English, as
indicated by the results of the vocabulary test and the
language background questionnaire. The vocabulary
test consisted of a non-speeded lexical decision task
(X_Lex Test; Meara, 2005) of which the highest possible
score is 5.000. The participants scored 4232 (SD: 504)
on average. The questionnaire indicated that formal
training in English started at school at 10 years of age,
although participants reported to have had some
contact with English earlier, mostly at home via television
(on average at the age of 9 years). English proficiency
was rated on a scale from 0 to 10. Participants rated
their English for active use 7.5 (SD: 1.0) and 8.4 (SD:
0.9) for passive use. The estimated daily use of English
reading and listening was 46% (SD: 27%) and speaking
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and writing 15% (SD: 16%).
Materials
For each translation direction, 72 translation pairs were
selected: 36 homophone pairs and 36 control pairs. An
example of a L1–L2 homophone translation pair is
BLAD – leaf (leaf is a homophone of the Dutch “lief”,
meaning “sweet”). In addition to these 72 translation
pairs, 96 filler translation pairs were selected. The homo-
phone and control pairs were carefully matched on
several properties in both the source and target
language: frequency of occurrence (CELEX; Baayen, Pie-
penbrock, Gulikers, 1995), number of letters and
number of syllables. Moreover, we matched for concrete-
ness, familiarity, cognate status and number of trans-
lations (see Appendix). Some of these values were
taken from the database by De Groot, Dannenburg,
and van Hell (1994). Because this database did not
contain all words selected, a small control study was per-
formed in which 10 participants were asked to rate the
missing words on concreteness, familiarity and cognate
status on a 7-point scale (e.g. 1 for not concrete at all,
7 for very concrete). Not only were the homophones
words matched to the control words, the Dutch and
English translation equivalents were also matched.
None of the differences in linguistic properties
between sets of words reached statistical significance.
Procedure and design
Participants were individually tested in a dimly lit room,
while sitting in front of a computer screen. Participants
translated as quickly and accurately as possible words
from Dutch to English (L1–L2) and from English to
Dutch (L2–L1). The order of translation direction was
counterbalanced across participants. The homophone
and control words were presented twice to obtain
enough trials for the EEG analysis. Therefore, each trans-
lation direction consisted of 240 words (72 stimuli pre-
sented twice and 96 fillers) and was presented in two
blocks. One complete set of homophones, control and
filler words were presented in random order in the
first block, and then repeated in a different order in
the second block. To familiarise the participants with
the task, before each translation direction block a
series of eight practice trials was presented containing
words that differed from the ones in the experimental
trials.
Words were presented in white-on-black in the centre
of the screen. First a fixation cross appeared in the
middle of the screen with a variable duration between
500 and 900 ms. Then, the word appeared for 4000 ms
maximum or until a response was recorded after which
the screen stayed blank for 2000 ms. RTs were measured
by means of a voice key. Translation errors and voice key
errors were assessed online and offline via voice record-
ings. During the placing of the electrodes participants
were asked to fill out a questionnaire on language back-
ground and after the experiment participants performed
an English proficiency test.
EEG procedure
The EEG was recorded using 32 Ag/AgCl electrodes on
the standard scalp sites of the extended international
10/20 system. Six electrodes were used to measure the
eye blinks (above and underneath the left eye), horizon-
tal eye movements (at the external canthi of both eyes)
and served as baseline (one at each mastoid) for offline
re-referencing.
The EEG was recorded by BioSemi ActiView, digitised
at a rate of 512 Hz. Before segmentation, the data were
digitally filtered with a high pass filter 0.01 Hz and a
low pass filter of 40 Hz. For the correction of electroocu-
logram artefacts, the Gratton, Coles, and Donchin (1983)
algorithm was applied. For non-ocular artefacts, trials
with amplitudes below –100 μV, above +100 μV, or
trials that made a 100 μV or larger voltage step within
200 ms were removed from the analysis. The EEG was
then segmented in epochs from –200 to +1000 ms rela-
tive to the stimulus onset. Only segments with correct
responses, given between 600 and 2500 ms, were
included; earlier responses were excluded to avoid
speech artefacts. Average ERPs were computed for
each condition using a pre-stimulus baseline of 200 ms.
The mean amplitude values were calculated per partici-
pant and condition.
 LANGUAGE, COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE 5

Behavioural and ERP analysis Table 1. Average RT, per cent errors and their standard deviation
(SD) for each of the four experimental conditions.
For the behaviour analysis, response errors and misses L1–L2 L2–L1
(17.7%) and voice key failures (1.4%) were excluded Translation direction: Mean SD Mean SD
from analysis. Also responses faster than 300 ms or RT (ms) Homophones 1002 111 992 97
slower than 2500 ms were excluded from the data Controls 903 112 991 94
Error (%) Homophones 24.5 9.4 27.6 11.4
(1.4%). On average, 59 RTs were available for analysis Controls 8.3 4.4 10.3 7.2
per participant per condition with a minimum of 39. Homophone effect RT 99 1
Homophone effect error 16.2 17.3
RTs were submitted to a repeated-measures analysis of
variance (ANOVA) with word type (homophones vs. con-
trols) and translation direction (L1–L2 vs. L2–L1 trans-
participants as random factor (F1) and the analyses
lation) as independent factors.
with items as random factor (F2). ANOVAs were per-
For the ERP analyses choosing time windows and
formed on the participant means with translation direc-
localisation can result in a large number of comparisons.
tion (English–Dutch vs. Dutch–English) and word type
To avoid this a priori bias, a multivariate statistical tool
(homophone vs. control) as within-participant and
called partial least squares (PLSs) was used (Lobaugh,
between-items factors. To examine whether a possible
West, & McIntosh, 2001; McIntosh, Bookstein, Haxby, &
homophone effect is affected by the repetition of the
Grady, 1996). Based on all experimental conditions
set of target words, the factor repetition was added as
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(translation direction and word type), singular value

a within-participant and within-item factor. The main
decomposition reveals a set of latent variables (LVs),
effect of translation direction approached significance
representing specific contrasts, that account for a per-
in the analysis by participants, F1(1, 20) = 3.22, p = .088,
centage of the cross-block covariance. Each LV value
h2p = 0.139 and reached significance in the analysis by
explains how much of the covariance was explained by
items, F2(1, 140) = 5.34, p = .022, h2p = 0.037, indicating
a particular LV. The estimate of obtaining a singular
that with these materials backward translation (L2–L1)
value by chance (similar to a p-value) was computed
was somewhat harder than forward translation (L1–L2).
by 1000 permutations. The reliability of electrode sal-
The main effect of word type was significant, both in
iences at each point of time was assessed by 200 boot-
the participant analysis and in the item analysis: F1(1,
strap re-samplings that apply random sampling with
20) = 23.67, p < .001, h2p = 0.542 and F2(1, 140) = 10.73,
replacement. The relation between the experimental
p < .005, h2p = 0.071, respectively. Also the main effect
design contrasts (represented by the LV) and the spatio-
of repetition was significant in both analyses: F1(1, 20)
temporal pattern of ERP amplitude changes is rep-
= 148.69, p < .001, h2p = 0.881 and F2(1, 140) = 335.54, p
resented by the electrode saliences. Electrode saliences
< .001, h2p = 0.706, respectively.
above 1.7 (p < .05) were considered reliable, because
The two-way interaction between translation direc-
the ratio of the salience to the standard error approxi-
tion and word type was significant in the participant
mates a z-score (see Grundy & Shedden, 2014, for an
analysis, F1(1, 20) = 42.16, p < .001, h2p = 0.678, but not
example of how PLS is applied to EEG data). Thus, PLS
in the item analysis, F2(1, 140) = 1.31, ns. Additional t-
analyses allowed us to narrow the time windows and
tests on the participant means indicated that translating
locations of experimental effects in order to perform con-
homophones took significantly more time than translat-
ventional ERP statistics. The mean amplitudes of the ERPs
ing control words in forward translation (L1–L2), t1(20) =
were submitted to repeated-measures ANOVAs. When
7.65, p < .001, and t2(70) = 3.56, p < .005, but not in back-
appropriate, the Greenhouse–Geisser correction was
ward translation (L2–L1), t1(20) < 1, t2(70) = 1.34, ns. The
applied to account for non-sphericity of the data (Green-
interaction between translation direction and repetition
house & Geisser, 1959); uncorrected degrees of freedom
approached significance in both the participant analysis,
and corrected probabilities are reported.
F1(1, 20) = 4.30, p = .051, h2p = 0.177, and in the item
analysis, F2(1, 140) = 3.56, p = .061, h2p = 0.025, reflecting
larger repetition (facilitation) effect for L1–L2 translation
Results than for L2–L1 translation. The two-way interaction
between word type and repetition was not significant in
Behavioural results
the participant analysis, F1(1, 20) = 1.05, ns., but did
Table 1 shows the average RTs and percentages of errors reach significance in the item analysis, F2(1, 140) = 6.23,
in the various conditions of the experiment. Although p = .014, h2p = 0.043. This finding indicates that in the
our selection of homophones was rather exhaustive, item analysis the homophone effect was smaller when
we report both the results of the analyses with the stimuli were repeated. However, a t-test performed
 6 I. CHRISTOFFELS ET AL

presentation onset up to 500 ms to decide which time

windows and localisations explain most of the covari-
ance for our contrasts. Only one LV was found and
accounted for 76.87% of the variance, p < .008 (Figure
2). This LV is a design contrast that shows a greater dis-
tinction between control words and homophones for
the L1–L2 than the L2–L1 translation direction.
The electrode saliences, reflecting confidence inter-
vals for salience across time points and electrodes,
revealed two time windows that were most reliable
for the LV. The 270–320 ms time window (P200)
Figure 2. Design scores for the LV, representing 76.87% of the
variance (p < .008).
revealed most reliability in the anterior region (elec-
trodes Fp1 AF3 F3 FC1 F4 FP2) and the 325–425 ms
time window (N400) in the right posterior region
on the item means showed that the homophone interfer-
(electrodes CP2 CP6 Pz P4 P8; Figure 3). Based on cor-
ence effect was still clearly present when the stimuli were
respondence with PLS, each time window was then
presented a second time, t2(142) = 2.88, p < .01. Finally,
analysed by classic statistical ERP analyses for its
the three-way interaction between translation direction,
own localisation with translation direction (L1–L2 vs.
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word type and repetition did not reach significance in

L2–L1) and trial type (controls vs. homophones) as
both the participant and item analyses (both p > .10).
independent variables. Figure 4 represents the ERP
An ANOVA performed on the percentages of errors per
waveforms of the word type effect for each translation
participant, with translation direction and word type as
direction.
within-participant factors, only revealed a main effect for
270–320 ms (P200). There was no significant main
word type, F(1, 20) = 168.78, p < .001, h2p = 0.894. Paired
effect of word type, F(1, 20) = 1.36, ns, h2p = 0.064, but
t-test indicated more errors for homophones than controls
there was for translation direction, F(1, 20) = 6.13, p
in both the L1–L2 translation direction, t(20) = 8.75, p
< .05, h2p = 0.235. The interaction between these two
< .001, and the L2–L1 direction, t(20) = 8.80, p < .001.
factors was also significant, F(1, 20) = 5.02, p < .05,
h2p = 0.201. To explore this interaction, the effects were
ERP results followed up with ANOVAs conducted separately for
each translation direction. When participants translated
With whole-brain PLS analysis the factors translation
from Dutch to English (L1–L2) the positive amplitudes
direction and word type were examined from stimulus
were significantly smaller for homophones (3.34 µV; SE:

Figure 3. A PLS electrode saliency map showing the reliability of LV for the word type effect separate for each translation direction. The
x-axis represents time in milliseconds (0–500) and the y-axis represents electrode salience (i.e. reliability of the LV).
 LANGUAGE, COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE 7

0.98) than control words (4.58 µV; SE: 0.88), F(1, 20) =
7.03, p < .05, h2p = 0.260. However, the difference
between homophones (5.56 µV; SE: 1.09) and controls
(5.28 µV; SE: 1.10) did not reach significance when trans-
lating from English to Dutch (L2–L1), F < 1.
325–425 ms (N400). The main effect of word type and
translation direction both reached significance, respect-
ively, F(1, 20) = 5.76, p < .05, h2p = 0.223 and F(1, 20) =
4.49, p < .05, η2p = 0.183. The interaction between word
type and translation direction did not reach significance,
F(1, 20) = 1,04, ns, h2p = 0.049. Within the right posterior
regions there were more negative deflections for homo-
phones (2.12 µV; SE: 0.79) than for control words (2.89
µV; SE: 0.86). In addition, there were more negative
deflections for the L1–L2 (1.88 µV; SE: 0.82) than the
L2–L1 translation direction (3.13 µV; SE: 0.90). Grand
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average ERPs for homophone and control translation
pairs are presented in Figure 4.
Discussion
Previous research on written and spoken word compre-
hension in bilinguals has revealed a clear homophone
effect, indicating that homophones activate lexical rep-
resentations in both languages in parallel, even in a
monolingual context. In the present study, we examined
a possible homophone effect in bilingual word pro-
duction. The presence of such an effect and its polarity
(facilitatory or inhibitory) may shed light on the pro-
cesses underlying word retrieval and production in bilin-
guals. Our experiment, using a word-translation task,
shows that the production of an interlingual homophone

Figure 4. Averaged stimulus-locked ERP waveforms for homophones (solid lines) versus control words (dashed lines) in L2–L1 (black
lines) and L1–L2 (grey lines) for the P200 (a) and N400 localisation (b). (a) Electrode selection for P200 analysis based on PLS whole-brain
analysis. (b) Electrode selection for N400 analysis based on PLS whole-brain analysis.
 8 I. CHRISTOFFELS ET AL
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Figure 4. (continued)
takes significantly more time than the production of non-
homophones when translating from L1 to L2. When
translating from L2 to L1 no significant effect of homo-
phone status on response latencies was observed.
However, both translation directions showed a larger
number of errors when homophones had to be pro-
duced than when control words had to be produced. It
could be argued that the relatively large number of
errors in the homophone conditions may reflect a differ-
ence in ease of translation between the two sets of
words that is unrelated to homophone status. We can
advance three arguments against this interpretation.
First, as discussed in the materials section, the words in
both sets were carefully matched with respect to a
large number of characteristics. Second, the relevant
homophone effects showed up both in the analyses by
participants and in the analyses by items. This latter
finding makes it unlikely that the observed effects are
due to a relatively small set of hard-to-translate words
in the homophone condition. Finally, the observation
of a smaller P200 for translating homophones than
control words in the L1–L2 direction also provides evi-
dence against an imperfect-matching account.
Interlingual homophones showed reduced ampli-
tudes of P200 compared to control words suggesting
that the processing of homophones does profit from
feedback from a phonemic level, as discussed in the
introduction and illustrated in the right panel of Figure
1. However, this effect was present only in the L1–L2
translation direction but not in the L2–L1 translation
direction. It is likely that P200 is sensitive to the proces-
sing of the source language (Christoffels et al., 2013). In
L1–L2 translation direction, reading in L1 should be
easy, consequently lexical access should benefit from
the phonemic overlap of interlingual homophones.
However, during L2–L1 translation, lexical retrieval for
the L2 words does not benefit from phonemic overlap
possible due to weaker word form to meaning connec-
tion in the L2. Finally, note that the P200 reported here
has an anterior maximum, while typically the P200
related to lexical access has a posterior distribution
(e.g. Strijkers et al., 2010). This difference in the localisation
of the P200 effect may be due to the fact that not only
lexical access, but also other mechanisms – such as
working memory – contribute to the effects observed
(e.g. Timmer & Schiller, 2012). For instance, the frontal

activation may be related to competition between
two lexical representations of interlingual homographs,
which have to be kept in working memory.
Interlingual homophones showed an increased N400
effect compared to control words in both translation
directions, suggesting that a semantic conflict is
detected. Earlier ERP studies showed decreased ampli-
tudes of N400 for cognates compared to control words
(e.g. Midgley, Holcomb, & Grainger, 2011; Peeters, Dijk-
stra, & Grainger, 2013). It has been argued that the
N400 component reflects difficulty of mapping a word
form to its meaning, which is facilitated by cognates
compared to non-cognates. Given these findings, we
propose the following account of the homophone
effect: first, in the process of word translation a response
word is selected (e.g. the L2 word “leaf” in response to
the Dutch “blad”) and processed up to the level of
response execution. Second, a monitoring process is
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initiated that probably entails the activation of the con-
ceptual representation corresponding to the available
response word. As concluded from studies on word rec-
ognition – discussed in the introduction – a homophone
like /li:f/ most probably activates two different conceptual
representations in an Dutch–English bilingual: the con-
cept “sweet” and the concept “leaf”. It is likely that the
resulting conflict at the conceptual level is responsible
for the delay in response execution, to a failure to
respond or to a response error. The asymmetry in the
homophone effect on response latencies (an effect in
L1–L2 translation but not in L2–L1 translation) may
result from the fact that the conflict is probably stronger
when the correct concept is activated by the L2 word
(the participants’ “weak” language) and the incorrect
concept is activated by the L1 word (the participants’
“strong” language). However, the fact that both trans-
lation directions show a homophone effect on error per-
centages suggests that also in the L2–L1 translation
direction a semantic incongruency is detected. This
interpretation is also in line with the observation that
both translation directions show a homophone effect
on the N400.
Another very relevant observation is the fact that the
N400 amplitudes were more negative in the L1–L2 direc-
tion compared to the L2–L1 direction. If it is correct that
the N400 reflects lexico-semantic processing, this finding
supports the idea that participants experienced more
semantic difficulties when they had to translate words
in the L1–L2 direction than in the L2–L1 direction. Inter-
estingly, this pattern is opposite to the one reported in a
study by Christoffels et al. (2013) in which participants
were asked to translate interlingual homographs
(not homophones) in the L1–L2 and L2–L1 directions.
With homographs, the results showed higher N400
LANGUAGE, COGNITION AND NEUROSCIENCE 9
amplitudes in the L2–L1 than L1–L2 translation direction.
This reversed pattern makes sense if one realises that the
problem in processing homographs is most probably not
in a production stage, but in the stage of selection of the
correct concept of the stimulus word and that this
problem is likely to be larger when the stimulus word
is presented in the L2–L1 translation condition than
when it is presented in the L1–L2 translation condition
(e.g. the Dutch–English homograph ROOM, which has
different meanings in Dutch and English, has to be inter-
preted as part of a house and not as cream – the Dutch
meaning). As argued above, the production of homo-
phones is – in contrast – likely to be harder when the
stimulus word is presented in L1 (as in translating the
L1 word “blad” into the L2 word “leaf”; a homophone
of the L1 word “lief”).
In conclusion, our data show evidence of a homo-
phone effect in word production. We argued that this
effect is most probably due to a conflict between simul-
taneously activated concepts during a process of output
monitoring, a conclusion that is in line with earlier
interpretations of homophone processing in word
comprehension.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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