TY - GEN A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Heyer, Vera A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Selective effects of age of acquisition on morphological priming BT - evidence for a sensitive period T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Is there an ideal time window for language acquisition after which nativelike representation and processing are unattainable? Although this question has been heavily debated, no consensus has been reached. Here, we present evidence for a sensitive period in language development and show that it is specific to grammar. We conducted a masked priming task with a group of Turkish-German bilinguals and examined age of acquisition (AoA) effects on the processing of complex words. We compared a subtle but meaningful linguistic contrast, that between grammatical inflection and lexical-based derivation. The results showed a highly selective AoA effect on inflectional (but not derivational) priming. In addition, the effect displayed a discontinuity indicative of a sensitive period: Priming from inflected forms was nativelike when acquisition started before the age of 5 but declined with increasing AoA. We conclude that the acquisition of morphological rules expressing morphosyntactic properties is constrained by maturational factors. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 486 KW - visual word recognition KW - 2nd-language acquisition KW - maturational constraints KW - language-acquisition KW - 2nd langauge KW - speech KW - experience KW - perception KW - english Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412611 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 486 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Veríssimo, Joao Marques A1 - Farhy, Yael A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Universal and particular in morphological processing BT - Evidence from Hebrew JF - Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology N2 - Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their nonconcatenative 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 , morphology , priming , Semitic Y1 - 2018 UR - http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17470218.2017.1310917 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2017.1310917 VL - 71 IS - 5 SP - 1125 EP - 1132 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Rothweiler, Monika A1 - Chilla, Solveig A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Subject−verb agreement in Specific Language Impairment BT - a study of monolingual and bilingual German-speaking children T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - This study investigates phenomena that have been claimed to be indicative of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in German, focusing on subject-verb agreement marking. Longitudinal data from fourteen German-speaking children with SLI, seven monolingual and seven Turkish-German successive bilingual children, were examined. We found similar patterns of impairment in the two participant groups. Both the monolingual and the bilingual children with SLI had correct (present vs. preterit) tense marking and produced syntactically complex sentences such as embedded clauses and wh-questions, but were limited in reliably producing correct agreement-marked verb forms. These contrasts indicate that agreement marking is impaired in German-speaking children with SLI, without any necessary concurrent deficits in either the CP-domain or in tense marking. Our results also show that it is possible to identify SLI from an early successive bilingual child's performance in one of her two languages. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 510 KW - verb morphology KW - tense deficit KW - agreement deficit KW - Turkish−German SLI Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415122 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 510 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Nakano, Yoko A1 - Ikemoto, Yu A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - How Orthography Modulates Morphological Priming BT - Subliminal Kanji Activation in Japanese JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - The current study investigates to what extent masked morphological priming is modulated by language-particular properties, specifically by its writing system. We present results from two masked priming experiments investigating the processing of complex Japanese words written in less common (moraic) scripts. In Experiment 1, participants performed lexical decisions on target verbs; these were preceded by primes which were either (i) a past-tense form of the same verb, (ii) a stem-related form with the epenthetic vowel -i, (iii) a semantically-related form, and (iv) a phonologically-related form. Significant priming effects were obtained for prime types (i), (ii), and (iii), but not for (iv). This pattern of results differs from previous findings on languages with alphabetic scripts, which found reliable masked priming effects for morphologically related prime/target pairs of type (i), but not for non-affixal and semantically-related primes of types (ii), and (iii). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime/target pairs which are neither morphologically, semantically, phonologically nor - as presented in their moraic scripts—orthographically related, but which—in their commonly written form—share the same kanji, which are logograms adopted from Chinese. The results showed a significant priming effect, with faster lexical-decision times for kanji-related prime/target pairs relative to unrelated ones. We conclude that affix-stripping is insufficient to account for masked morphological priming effects across languages, but that language-particular properties (in the case of Japanese, the writing system) affect the processing of (morphologically) complex words. KW - morphologically complex words KW - morpho-orthography KW - decompositon KW - Japanese KW - kanji KW - kana Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00316 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 7 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Nakano, Yoko A1 - Ikemoto, Yu A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - How Orthography Modulates Morphological Priming BT - Subliminal Kanji Activation in Japanese N2 - The current study investigates to what extent masked morphological priming is modulated by language-particular properties, specifically by its writing system. We present results from two masked priming experiments investigating the processing of complex Japanese words written in less common (moraic) scripts. In Experiment 1, participants performed lexical decisions on target verbs; these were preceded by primes which were either (i) a past-tense form of the same verb, (ii) a stem-related form with the epenthetic vowel -i, (iii) a semantically-related form, and (iv) a phonologically-related form. Significant priming effects were obtained for prime types (i), (ii), and (iii), but not for (iv). This pattern of results differs from previous findings on languages with alphabetic scripts, which found reliable masked priming effects for morphologically related prime/target pairs of type (i), but not for non-affixal and semantically-related primes of types (ii), and (iii). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime/target pairs which are neither morphologically, semantically, phonologically nor - as presented in their moraic scripts—orthographically related, but which—in their commonly written form—share the same kanji, which are logograms adopted from Chinese. The results showed a significant priming effect, with faster lexical-decision times for kanji-related prime/target pairs relative to unrelated ones. We conclude that affix-stripping is insufficient to account for masked morphological priming effects across languages, but that language-particular properties (in the case of Japanese, the writing system) affect the processing of (morphologically) complex words. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 293 KW - Japanese KW - decompositon KW - kana KW - kanji KW - morpho-orthography KW - morphologically complex words Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-91692 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Mosca, Michela A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Examining language switching in bilinguals BT - the role of preparation time T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Much research on language control in bilinguals has relied on the interpretation of the costs of switching between two languages. Of the two types of costs that are linked to language control, switching costs are assumed to be transient in nature and modulated by trial-specific manipulations (e.g., by preparation time), while mixing costs are supposed to be more stable and less affected by trial-specific manipulations. The present study investigated the effect of preparation time on switching and mixing costs, revealing that both types of costs can be influenced by trial-specific manipulations. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 451 KW - bilingual language switching KW - preparation time KW - switching costs KW - mixing costs KW - picture naming Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413752 IS - 451 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Leminen, Alina A1 - Lehtonen, Minna A1 - Bozic, Mirjana A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Editorial BT - morphologically complex words in the mind/brain T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - kein abstract vorhanden T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 441 KW - morphology KW - derivation KW - inflection KW - compound KW - L2 KW - dyslexia KW - semantics KW - decomposition Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-407243 IS - 441 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Krause, Helena A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphosyntax in the bilingual mental lexicon BT - an experimental study of strong stems in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Although morphosyntax has been identified as a major source of difficulty for adult (nonnative) language learners, most previous studies have examined a limited set of largely affix-based phenomena. Little is known about word-based morphosyntax in late bilinguals and of how morphosyntax is represented and processed in a nonnative speaker's lexicon. To address these questions, we report results from two behavioral experiments investigating stem variants of strong verbs in German (which encode features such as tense, person, and number) in groups of advanced adult learners as well as native speakers of German. Although the late bilinguals were highly proficient in German, the results of a lexical priming experiment revealed clear native-nonnative differences. We argue that lexical representation and processing relies less on morphosyntactic information in a nonnative than in a native language. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 520 KW - morphological structure KW - 2nd-language grammar KW - inflected nouns KW - ER-FMRI KW - representation KW - sensitivity KW - violations KW - acquisition KW - agreement KW - learners Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-414431 IS - 520 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Krause, Helena A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphosyntax in the bilingual mental lexicon BT - an experimental study of strong stems in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Although morphosyntax has been identified as a major source of difficulty for adult (nonnative) language learners, most previous studies have examined a limited set of largely affix-based phenomena. Little is known about word-based morphosyntax in late bilinguals and of how morphosyntax is represented and processed in a nonnative speaker's lexicon. To address these questions, we report results from two behavioral experiments investigating stem variants of strong verbs in German (which encode features such as tense, person, and number) in groups of advanced adult learners as well as native speakers of German. Although the late bilinguals were highly proficient in German, the results of a lexical priming experiment revealed clear native-nonnative differences. We argue that lexical representation and processing relies less on morphosyntactic information in a nonnative than in a native language. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 528 KW - morphological structure KW - 2nd-language grammar KW - inflected nouns KW - ER-FMRI KW - representation KW - sensitivity KW - violations KW - acquisition KW - agreement KW - learners Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415478 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 528 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Kirkici, Bilal A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Inflection and derivation in native and non-native language processing BT - masked priming experiments on Turkish T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Much previous experimental research on morphological processing has focused on surface and meaning-level properties of morphologically complex words, without paying much attention to the morphological differences between inflectional and derivational processes. Realization-based theories of morphology, for example, assume specific morpholexical representations for derived words that distinguish them from the products of inflectional or paradigmatic processes. The present study reports results from a series of masked priming experiments investigating the processing of inflectional and derivational phenomena in native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers in a non-Indo-European language, Turkish. We specifically compared regular (Aorist) verb inflection with deadjectival nominalization, both of which are highly frequent, productive and transparent in Turkish. The experiments demonstrated different priming patterns for inflection and derivation, specifically within the L2 group. Implications of these findings are discussed both for accounts of L2 morphological processing and for the controversial linguistic distinction between inflection and derivation. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 512 KW - morphological processing KW - second language KW - late bilinguals Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415664 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 512 ER -