Persistent differences between native speakers and late bilinguals
- 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.
Author details: | Jana ReifegersteORCiD, Kirill ElinORCiDGND, Harald ClahsenORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000615 |
ISSN: | 1366-7289 |
ISSN: | 1469-1841 |
Title of parent work (English): | Bilingualism : language and cognition |
Subtitle (English): | Evidence from inflectional and derivational processing in older speakers |
Publisher: | Cambridge Univ. Press |
Place of publishing: | New York |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of first publication: | 2018/06/04 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/02/25 |
Tag: | aging; derivation; inflection; late bilinguals; morphology; processing |
Volume: | 22 |
Issue: | 3 |
Number of pages: | 16 |
First page: | 425 |
Last Page: | 440 |
Funding institution: | Alexander-von-Humboldt-ProfessorshipAlexander von Humboldt Foundation |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
DDC classification: | 4 Sprache / 41 Linguistik / 410 Linguistik |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Bronze Open-Access |