Word recognition in two languages and orthographies: English and Greek

Word recognition processes of monolingual readers of English and of Greek were examined with respect to the orthographic and syntactic characteristics of each language. Because of Greek's direct letter-to-sound correspondence, which is unlike the indirect representation of English, the possibility was raised of a greater influence of the phonological code in Greek word recognition. Because Greek is an inflected language, whereas English is a word order language, it was also possible that syntax might influence word recognition patterns in the two languages differentially. These cross-linguistic research questions were investigated within the context of a letter cancellation paradigm. The results provide evidence that readers are sensitive to both the orthographic and the linguistic idiosyncracies of their language. The results are discussed in terms of the orthographic depth hypothesis and the competition model.