TY  - JOUR
A1  - Clahsen, Harald
A1  - Gerth, Sabrina
A1  - Heyer, Vera
A1  - Schott, Esther
T1  - Morphology constrains native and non-native word formation in different ways Evidence from plurals inside compounds
JF  - The mental lexicon
N2  - 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 than L1 comprehenders.
KW  - morphological processing
KW  - compounding
KW  - visual world paradigm
KW  - eye movement
KW  - bilingualism
KW  - second language
Y1  - 2015
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.10.1.03cla
SN  - 1871-1340
SN  - 1871-1375
VL  - 10
IS  - 1
SP  - 53
EP  - 87
PB  - Benjamins
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -