Of revistas and magacínes: Lexical competition in the online processing of established loanwords

The transfer of words from one language to another is ubiquitous in many of the world's languages. While loanwords have a rich literature in the fields of historical linguistics, language contact, and sociolinguistics, little work has been done examining how loanwords are processed by bilinguals with knowledge of both the source and recipient languages. The present study uses pupillometry to compare the online processing of established loanwords in Puerto Rican Spanish to native Spanish words by highly proficient Puerto Rican Spanish-English bilinguals. Established loanwords elicited a significantly larger pupillary response than native Spanish words, with the pupillary response modulated by both the frequency of the loanword itself and of the native Spanish counterpart. These findings suggest that established loanwords are processed differently than native Spanish words and compete with their native equivalents, potentially due to both intra- and inter-lingual effects of saliency.