TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Jessen, Anna T1 - Do bilingual children lag behind? A study of morphological encoding using ERPs JF - Journal of child language N2 - The current study investigates how bilingual children encode and produce morphologically complex words. We employed a silent-production-plus-delayed-vocalization paradigm in which event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during silent encoding of inflected words which were subsequently cued to be overtly produced. The bilingual children's spoken responses and their ERPs were compared to previous datasets from monolingual children on the same task. We found an enhanced negativity for regular relative to irregular forms during silent production in both bilingual children's languages, replicating the ERP effect previously obtained from monolingual children. Nevertheless, the bilingual children produced more morphological errors (viz. over-regularizations) than monolingual children. We conclude that mechanisms of morphological encoding (as measured by ERPs) are parallel for bilingual and monolingual children, and that the increased over-regularization rates are due to their reduced exposure to each of the two languages (relative to monolingual children). KW - morphology KW - event-related brain potentials KW - bilingualism Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000919000321 SN - 0305-0009 SN - 1469-7602 VL - 46 IS - 5 SP - 955 EP - 979 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York 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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Rothweiler, Monika A1 - Sterner, Franziska A1 - Chilla, Solveig T1 - Linguistic markers of specific language impairment in bilingual children: the case of verb morphology JF - Clinical linguistics & phonetics KW - Bilingualism KW - German KW - morphology KW - SLI KW - Turkish Y1 - 2014 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3109/02699206.2014.886726 SN - 0269-9206 SN - 1464-5076 VL - 28 IS - 9 SP - 709 EP - 721 PB - Taylor & Francis Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Uygun, Serkan A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphological processing in heritage speakers BT - a masked priming study on the Turkish aorist JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - 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. KW - Turkish KW - morphology KW - aorist KW - priming KW - variability KW - processing Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000577 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 24 IS - 3 SP - 415 EP - 426 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reifegerste, Jana A1 - Elin, Kirill A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Persistent differences between native speakers and late bilinguals BT - Evidence from inflectional and derivational processing in older speakers JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - Previous research with younger adults has revealed differences between native (L1) and non-native late-bilingual (L2) speakers with respect to how morphologically complex words are processed. This study examines whether these L1/L2 differences persist into old age. We tested masked-priming effects for derived and inflected word forms in older L1 and L2 speakers of German and compared them to results from younger L1 and L2 speakers on the same experiment (mean ages: 62 vs. 24). We found longer overall response times paired with better accuracy scores for older (L1 and L2) participants than for younger participants. The priming patterns, however, were not affected by chronological age. While both L1 and L2 speakers showed derivational priming, only the L1 speakers demonstrated inflectional priming. We argue that general performance in both L1 and L2 is affected by aging, but that the more profound differences between native and non-native processing persist into old age. KW - aging KW - late bilinguals KW - processing KW - morphology KW - inflection KW - derivation Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000615 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 22 IS - 3 SP - 425 EP - 440 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Farhy, Yael A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Universal and particular in morphological processing BT - evidence from Hebrew JF - The quarterly journal of experimental psychology N2 - Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their non-concatenative morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs. Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages. KW - Language universals KW - morphology KW - priming KW - Semitic Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2017.1310917 SN - 1747-0218 SN - 1747-0226 VL - 71 IS - 5 SP - 1125 EP - 1133 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ciaccio, Laura Anna A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Variability and consistency in first and second language processing BT - A masked morphological priming study on prefixation and suffixation JF - Language Learning N2 - 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: . KW - prefixed words KW - derivation KW - second language processing KW - masked priming KW - morphology Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12370 SN - 0023-8333 SN - 1467-9922 VL - 70 IS - 1 SP - 103 EP - 136 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Jessen, Anna T1 - Variability and its limits in bilingual word recognition BT - a morphological priming study JF - The mental lexicon N2 - 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. KW - German KW - inflection KW - morphology KW - L2 processing KW - masked priming Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.20013.cla SN - 1871-1340 SN - 1871-1375 VL - 15 IS - 2 SP - 295 EP - 329 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER -