TY  - JOUR
A1  - Jessen, Anna
A1  - Verissimo, João Marques
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Variability and consistency in late bilinguals’ morphology
BT  - an ERP production study
JF  - The mental lexicon
N2  - Speaking a late-learned second language (L2) is supposed to yield more variable and less consistent output than speaking one’s first language (L1), particularly with respect to reliably adhering to grammatical morphology. The current study investigates both internal processes involved in encoding morphologically complex words – by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during participants’ silent productions – and the corresponding overt output. We specifically examined compounds with plural or singular modifiers in English. Thirty-one advanced L2 speakers of English (L1: German) were compared to a control group of 20 L1 English speakers from an earlier study. We found an enhanced (right-frontal) negativity during (silent) morphological encoding for compounds produced from regular plural forms relative to compounds formed from irregular plurals, replicating the ERP effect obtained for the L1 group. The L2 speakers’ overt productions, however, were significantly less consistent than those of the L1 speakers on the same task. We suggest that L2 speakers employ the same mechanisms for morphological encoding as L1 speakers, but with less reliance on grammatical constraints than L1 speakers.
KW  - event-related potentials (ERP)
KW  - plurals in compounds
KW  - morphological constraints
KW  - harmonic grammars
KW  - morphological processing
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.18002.jes
SN  - 1871-1340
SN  - 1871-1375
VL  - 13
IS  - 2
SP  - 186
EP  - 214
PB  - John Benjamins Publishing Co.
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Farhy, Yael
A1  - Verissimo, Joao Marques
T1  - Semantic Effects in Morphological Priming: The Case of Hebrew Stems
JF  - Language and speech
N2  - To what extent is morphological representation in different languages dependent on semantic information? Unlike Indo-European languages, the Semitic mental lexicon has been argued to be purely "morphologically driven", with complex stems represented in a decomposed format (root + vowel pattern) irrespectively of their semantic properties. We have examined this claim by comparing cross-modal root-priming effects elicited by Hebrew verbs of a productive, open-ended class (Piel) and verbs of a closed-class (Paal). Morphological priming effects were obtained for both verb types, but prime-target semantic relatedness interacted with class, and only modulated responses following Paal, but not Piel primes. We explain these results by postulating different types of morpho-lexical representation for the different classes: structured stems, in the case of Piel, and whole-stems (which lack internal morphological structure), in the case of Paal. We conclude that semantic effects in morphological priming are also obtained in Semitic languages, but they are crucially dependent on type of morpho-lexical representation.
KW  - Morphology
KW  - priming
KW  - Semitic
KW  - semantic transparency
KW  - stems
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830918811863
SN  - 0023-8309
SN  - 1756-6053
VL  - 62
IS  - 4
SP  - 737
EP  - 750
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Farhy, Yael
A1  - Verissimo, Joao Marques
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
T1  - Do late bilinguals access pure morphology during word recognition?
BT  - a masked-priming study on Hebrew as a second language
JF  - Bilingualism : language and cognition
N2  - This study extends research on morphological processing in late bilinguals to a rarely examined language type, Semitic, by reporting results from a masked-priming experiment with 58 non-native, advanced, second-language (L2) speakers of Hebrew in comparison with native (L1) speakers. We took advantage of a case of ‘pure morphology’ in Hebrew, the so-called binyanim, which represent (essentially arbitrary) morphological classes for verbs. Our results revealed a non-native priming pattern for the L2 group, with root-priming effects restricted to non-finite prime words irrespective of binyanim type. We conclude that root extraction in L2 Hebrew word recognition is less sensitive to both morphological and morphosyntactic cues than in the L1, in line with the Shallow-Structure Hypothesis of L2 processing.
KW  - grammatical processing
KW  - morphology
KW  - behavioural measurements
KW  - healthy normal subjects
KW  - Hebrew
Y1  - 2018
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000032
SN  - 1366-7289
SN  - 1469-1841
VL  - 21
IS  - 5
SP  - 945
EP  - 951
PB  - Cambridge Univ. Press
CY  - New York
ER  -