Mizo Speakers Reading Ambiguity in L1 and L2: A Reaction Time Study

This study provides substantial evidence on the reading behavior of native Mizo speakers’ L1 and L2, which are Mizo and English, respectively. It primarily focuses on reading ambiguous sentences containing homographs. Two experiments observed the reaction time (RT) of Mizo native speakers reading text in L1 and L2, respectively. A comparative analysis of the RT of both L1 and L2 was done to obtain deeper learning about the cognitive processes involved while reading the two languages. Ambiguous sentences were read in significantly longer times in both L1 and L2. Besides, findings reveal that the readers read ambiguous sentences in L1 significantly longer than in L2. This suggests that Mizo speakers can read and process their L2 quicker than their L1 in specific sentences containing homographs. The reason behind this is the absence of tone information of the Mizo homographs, which lengthens reading time and requires the extraction of their meanings and pronunciations.