This paper looks into the role of lexical input consistency and frequency in L2 reading to highlight two important features of dynamic connectionism in reading: nonlinear combination of probabilistic constraints and division of labour. Such features are complementary and together they account for the interaction observed in investigations grounded on the postulate that the input is a rich combination of different types of information whose emerging biases guide acquisition. For that purpose, evidence is presented from two studies, which deal with: 1) the interaction between the effects of English lexical frequency and consistency in the prevalence of vowel assimilation during a word naming task among Brazilian students of English; 2) the role of phonastemes in building textual comprehension in English (L2).
L2 reading; lexical frequency and consistency; connectionism
