Morphology constrains native and non-native word formation in different ways Evidence from plurals inside compounds
- The role of morphological and syntactic information in non-native second language (L2) comprehension is controversial. Some have argued that late bilinguals rapidly integrate grammatical cues with other information sources during reading or listening in the same way as native speakers. Others claim that structural cues are underused in L2 processing. We examined different kinds of modifiers inside compounds (e.g. singulars vs. plurals, *rat eater vs. rats eater) with respect to this controversy which are subject to both structural and nonstructural constraints. Two offline and two online (eye-movement) experiments were performed examining the role of these constraints in spoken language comprehension of English and German, testing 77 advanced L2 learners. We also compared the L2 groups to corresponding groups of native speakers. Our results suggest that despite native-like sensitivity to the compounding constraints, late bilinguals rely more on non-structural constraints and are less able to revise their initial interpretations thanThe role of morphological and syntactic information in non-native second language (L2) comprehension is controversial. Some have argued that late bilinguals rapidly integrate grammatical cues with other information sources during reading or listening in the same way as native speakers. Others claim that structural cues are underused in L2 processing. We examined different kinds of modifiers inside compounds (e.g. singulars vs. plurals, *rat eater vs. rats eater) with respect to this controversy which are subject to both structural and nonstructural constraints. Two offline and two online (eye-movement) experiments were performed examining the role of these constraints in spoken language comprehension of English and German, testing 77 advanced L2 learners. We also compared the L2 groups to corresponding groups of native speakers. Our results suggest that despite native-like sensitivity to the compounding constraints, late bilinguals rely more on non-structural constraints and are less able to revise their initial interpretations than L1 comprehenders.…
| Author details: | Harald ClahsenORCiDGND, Sabrina Gerth, Vera HeyerGND, Esther Schott |
|---|---|
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.10.1.03cla |
| ISSN: | 1871-1340 |
| ISSN: | 1871-1375 |
| Title of parent work (English): | The mental lexicon |
| Publisher: | Benjamins |
| Place of publishing: | Amsterdam |
| Publication type: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Year of first publication: | 2015 |
| Publication year: | 2015 |
| Release date: | 2017/03/27 |
| Tag: | bilingualism; compounding; eye movement; morphological processing; second language; visual world paradigm |
| Volume: | 10 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Number of pages: | 35 |
| First page: | 53 |
| Last Page: | 87 |
| Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
| Peer review: | Referiert |
| Institution name at the time of the publication: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
