@misc{CiaccioClahsen2019, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Variability and consistency in first and second language processing}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {1}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51772}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517727}, pages = {36}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Word forms such as walked or walker are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study reports results from a visual masked priming experiment focusing on different types of derived word forms (specifically prefixed vs. suffixed) in first and second language speakers of German. We compared the present findings with results from previous studies on inflection and compounding and proposed an account of morphological decomposition that captures both the variability and the consistency of morphological decomposition for different morphological types and for first and second language speakers. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. Study materials are publicly accessible via the Open Science Framework at . Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science.}, language = {en} } @misc{RubergRothweilerVerissimoetal.2019, author = {Ruberg, Tobias and Rothweiler, Monika and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o Marques and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment}, series = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, journal = {Zweitver{\"o}ffentlichungen der Universit{\"a}t Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe}, number = {3}, issn = {1866-8364}, doi = {10.25932/publishup-51809}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-518095}, pages = {15}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.}, language = {en} } @article{RubergRothweilerVerissimoetal.2019, author = {Ruberg, Tobias and Rothweiler, Monika and Ver{\´i}ssimo, Jo{\~a}o Marques and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment}, series = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition}, volume = {23}, journal = {Bilingualism: Language and Cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728919000580}, pages = {668 -- 680}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not.}, language = {en} } @article{CiaccioKgoloClahsen2020, author = {Ciaccio, Laura Anna and Kgolo, Naledi and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Morphological decomposition in Bantu}, series = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, volume = {35}, journal = {Language, cognition and neuroscience}, number = {10}, publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {Abingdon}, issn = {2327-3798}, doi = {10.1080/23273798.2020.1722847}, pages = {1257 -- 1271}, year = {2020}, abstract = {African languages have rarely been the subject of psycholinguistic experimentation. The current study employs a masked visual priming experiment to investigate morphological processing in a Bantu language, Setswana. Our study takes advantage of the rich system of prefixes in Bantu languages, which offers the opportunity of testing morphological priming effects from prefixed inflected words and directly comparing them to priming effects from prefixed derived words on the same targets. We found significant priming effects of similar magnitude for both prefixed inflected and derived word forms, which were clearly dissociable from prime-target relatedness in both meaning and (orthographic) form. These findings provide support for a (possibly universal) mechanism of morphological decomposition applied during early visual word recognition that segments both (prefixed) inflected and derived word forms into their morphological constituents.}, language = {en} } @article{ClahsenJessen2021, author = {Clahsen, Harald and Jessen, Anna}, title = {Morphological generalization in bilingual language production}, series = {Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics}, volume = {28}, journal = {Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics}, number = {4}, publisher = {Psychology Press, Taylor \& Francis Group}, address = {London}, issn = {1048-9223}, doi = {10.1080/10489223.2021.1910267}, pages = {370 -- 386}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Morphological variability in bilingual language production is widely attested. Producing inflected words has been found to be less reliable and consistent in bilinguals than in first-language (functionally monolingual) L1 speakers, even for bilingual speakers at advanced proficiency levels. The sources for these differences are not well understood. The current study presents a detailed investigation of morphological generalization processes in bilingual speakers' language production. We examined past participle formation of German using an elicited-production experiment containing nonce verbs with varying degrees of similarity to existing verbs testing a large group of bilingual Turkish/German speakers relative to L1 German speakers. We compared similarity-based lexical extensions with generalizations of morphological rules. The results show that rule-based generalizations are used less often and more variably within the bilingual group than within the L1 group. Our results also show a selective effect of age of acquisition on the bilingual speakers' morphological generalizations.}, language = {en} } @article{UygunClahsen2021, author = {Uygun, Serkan and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Morphological processing in heritage speakers}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {24}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728920000577}, pages = {415 -- 426}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Previous research has shown that heritage speakers struggle with inflectional morphology. 'Limitations of online resources' for processing a non-dominant language has been claimed as one possible reason for these difficulties. To date, however, there is very little experimental evidence on real-time language processing in heritage speakers. Here we report results from a masked priming experiment with 97 bilingual (Turkish/German) heritage speakers and a control group of 40 non-heritage speakers of Turkish examining regular and irregular forms of the Turkish aorist. We found that, for the regular aorist, heritage speakers use the same morphological decomposition mechanism ('affix stripping') as control speakers, whereas for processing irregularly inflected forms they exhibited more variability (i.e., less homogeneous performance) than the control group. Heritage speakers also demonstrated semantic priming effects. At a more general level, these results indicate that heritage speakers draw on multiple sources of information for recognizing morphologically complex words.}, language = {en} } @article{Clahsen2021, author = {Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Obituary: Pieter Muysken}, series = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, volume = {24}, journal = {Bilingualism : language and cognition}, number = {4}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {Cambridge}, issn = {1366-7289}, doi = {10.1017/S1366728921000249}, pages = {597 -- 598}, year = {2021}, language = {en} } @article{ClahsenJessen2020, author = {Clahsen, Harald and Jessen, Anna}, title = {Variability and its limits in bilingual word recognition}, series = {The mental lexicon}, volume = {15}, journal = {The mental lexicon}, number = {2}, publisher = {John Benjamins Publishing Co.}, address = {Amsterdam}, issn = {1871-1340}, doi = {10.1075/ml.20013.cla}, pages = {295 -- 329}, year = {2020}, abstract = {This study examines the processing of morphologically complex words focusing on how morphological (in addition to orthographic and semantic) factors affect bilingual word recognition. We report findings from a large experimental study with groups of bilingual (Turkish/German) speakers using the visual masked-priming technique. We found morphologically mediated effects on the response speed and the inter-individual variability within the bilingual participant group. We conclude that the grammar (qua morphological parsing) not only enhances speed of processing in bilingual language processing but also yields more uniform performance and thereby constrains variability within a group of otherwise heterogeneous individuals.}, language = {en} } @article{JessenFleischhauerClahsen2017, author = {Jessen, Anna and Fleischhauer, Elisabeth and Clahsen, Harald}, title = {Morphological encoding in German children's language production}, series = {Journal of child language}, volume = {44}, journal = {Journal of child language}, publisher = {Cambridge Univ. Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0305-0009}, doi = {10.1017/S0305000916000118}, pages = {427 -- 456}, year = {2017}, abstract = {This study reports developmental changes in morphological encoding across late childhood. We examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during the silent production of regularly vs. irregularly inflected verb forms (viz. -t vs. -n participles of German) in groups of eight- to ten-year-olds, eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, and adults. The adult data revealed an enhanced (right-frontal) negativity 300-450 ms after cue onset for the (silent) production of -t relative to -n past participle forms (e.g. geplant vs. gehauen 'planned' vs. 'hit'). For the eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, the same enhanced negativity was found, with a more posterior distribution and a longer duration (=300-550 ms). The eight- to ten-year-olds also showed this negativity, again with a posterior distribution, but with a considerably delayed onset (800-1,000 ms). We suggest that this negativity reflects combinatorial processing required for producing -t participles in both children and adults and that the spatial and temporal modulations of this ERP effect across the three participant groups are due to developmental changes of the brain networks involved in processing morphologically complex words.}, language = {en} } @misc{ClahsenFelser2017, author = {Clahsen, Harald and Felser, Claudia}, title = {Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis}, series = {Studies in second language acquisition}, volume = {40}, journal = {Studies in second language acquisition}, number = {3}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, address = {New York}, issn = {0272-2631}, doi = {10.1017/S0272263117000250}, pages = {693 -- 706}, year = {2017}, abstract = {Since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) was first put forward in 2006, it has inspired a growing body of research on grammatical processing in nonnative (L2) speakers. More than 10 years later, we think it is time for the SSH to be reconsidered in the light of new empirical findings and current theoretical assumptions about human language processing. The purpose of our critical commentary is twofold: to clarify some issues regarding the SSH and to sketch possible ways in which this hypothesis might be refined and improved to better account for L1 and L2 speakers' performance patterns.}, language = {en} }