Supplementary file 1_Cross-linguistic phonological activation in Chinese– English–Korean trilinguals.docx

Using a masked priming lexical decision task, we examined phonological priming from English (L2) to Korean (L3) in Chinese–English–Korean unbalanced trilinguals. Critically, homophone pairs were employed to minimize semantic and orthographic overlap, allowing for a clearer examination of phonological priming than previous studies relying on cognates.

The results showed a robust phonological priming effect between non-native languages, suggesting that phonological information alone can trigger cross-linguistic activation. In addition, proficiency was treated as a continuous variable, with L2 and L3 proficiency showing dissociable effects: higher L3 proficiency facilitated lexical access, whereas higher L2 proficiency was associated with slower response times, suggesting increased cross-language competition.