TY - JOUR A1 - Ruberg, Tobias A1 - Rothweiler, Monika A1 - Veríssimo, João Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Childhood bilingualism and Specific Language Impairment BT - A study of the CP-domain in German SLI JF - Bilingualism: Language and Cognition N2 - This study addresses the question of whether and how growing up with more than one language shapes a child's language impairment. Our focus is on Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in bilingual (Turkish-German) children. We specifically investigated a range of phenomena related to the so-called CP (Complementizer Phrase) in German, the hierarchically highest layer of syntactic clause structure, which has been argued to be particularly affected in children with SLI. Spontaneous speech data were examined from bilingual children with SLI in comparison to two comparison groups: (i) typically-developing bilingual children, (ii) monolingual children with SLI. We found that despite persistent difficulty with subject-verb agreement, the two groups of children with SLI did not show any impairment of the CP-domain. We conclude that while subject-verb agreement is a suitable linguistic marker of SLI in German-speaking children, for both monolingual and bilingual ones, 'vulnerability of the CP-domain' is not. KW - developmental language impairment KW - specific language impairment KW - child second language acquisition KW - syntax KW - agreement Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728919000580 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 23 IS - 3 SP - 668 EP - 680 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Hansen, Detlef T1 - Profiling linguistic disability in German-speaking children JF - Assessing Grammar : the Languages of LARSP Y1 - 2012 SN - 978-1-8476-9639-7 U6 - https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847696397-007 SP - 77 EP - 91 PB - Multilingual Matters CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ciaccio, Laura Anna A1 - Kgolo, Naledi A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphological decomposition in Bantu BT - a masked priming study on Setswana prefixation JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - African languages have rarely been the subject of psycholinguistic experimentation. The current study employs a masked visual priming experiment to investigate morphological processing in a Bantu language, Setswana. Our study takes advantage of the rich system of prefixes in Bantu languages, which offers the opportunity of testing morphological priming effects from prefixed inflected words and directly comparing them to priming effects from prefixed derived words on the same targets. We found significant priming effects of similar magnitude for both prefixed inflected and derived word forms, which were clearly dissociable from prime-target relatedness in both meaning and (orthographic) form. These findings provide support for a (possibly universal) mechanism of morphological decomposition applied during early visual word recognition that segments both (prefixed) inflected and derived word forms into their morphological constituents. KW - prefixes KW - inflection KW - affix stripping KW - visual word recognition KW - African KW - languages Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2020.1722847 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 35 IS - 10 SP - 1257 EP - 1271 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Jessen, Anna T1 - Morphological generalization in bilingual language production BT - age of acquisition determines variability JF - Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics N2 - Morphological variability in bilingual language production is widely attested. Producing inflected words has been found to be less reliable and consistent in bilinguals than in first-language (functionally monolingual) L1 speakers, even for bilingual speakers at advanced proficiency levels. The sources for these differences are not well understood. The current study presents a detailed investigation of morphological generalization processes in bilingual speakers' language production. We examined past participle formation of German using an elicited-production experiment containing nonce verbs with varying degrees of similarity to existing verbs testing a large group of bilingual Turkish/German speakers relative to L1 German speakers. We compared similarity-based lexical extensions with generalizations of morphological rules. The results show that rule-based generalizations are used less often and more variably within the bilingual group than within the L1 group. Our results also show a selective effect of age of acquisition on the bilingual speakers' morphological generalizations. Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1910267 SN - 1048-9223 SN - 1532-7817 VL - 28 IS - 4 SP - 370 EP - 386 PB - Psychology Press, 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 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Obituary: Pieter Muysken JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728921000249 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 24 IS - 4 SP - 597 EP - 598 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge 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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Jessen, Anna A1 - Fleischhauer, Elisabeth A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphological encoding in German children's language production BT - evidence from event-related brain potentials JF - Journal of child language N2 - This study reports developmental changes in morphological encoding across late childhood. We examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during the silent production of regularly vs. irregularly inflected verb forms (viz. -t vs. -n participles of German) in groups of eight- to ten-year-olds, eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, and adults. The adult data revealed an enhanced (right-frontal) negativity 300–450 ms after cue onset for the (silent) production of -t relative to -n past participle forms (e.g. geplant vs. gehauen ‘planned’ vs. ‘hit’). For the eleven- to thirteen-year-olds, the same enhanced negativity was found, with a more posterior distribution and a longer duration (=300–550 ms). The eight- to ten-year-olds also showed this negativity, again with a posterior distribution, but with a considerably delayed onset (800–1,000 ms). We suggest that this negativity reflects combinatorial processing required for producing -t participles in both children and adults and that the spatial and temporal modulations of this ERP effect across the three participant groups are due to developmental changes of the brain networks involved in processing morphologically complex words. Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000916000118 SN - 0305-0009 SN - 1469-7602 VL - 44 SP - 427 EP - 456 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Verissimo, 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 JF - Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics 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. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2017.1346104 SN - 1048-9223 SN - 1532-7817 VL - 25 IS - 3 SP - 315 EP - 326 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Jessen, Anna A1 - Verissimo, João Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Variability and consistency in late bilinguals’ morphology BT - an ERP production study JF - The mental lexicon N2 - Speaking a late-learned second language (L2) is supposed to yield more variable and less consistent output than speaking one’s first language (L1), particularly with respect to reliably adhering to grammatical morphology. The current study investigates both internal processes involved in encoding morphologically complex words – by recording event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during participants’ silent productions – and the corresponding overt output. We specifically examined compounds with plural or singular modifiers in English. Thirty-one advanced L2 speakers of English (L1: German) were compared to a control group of 20 L1 English speakers from an earlier study. We found an enhanced (right-frontal) negativity during (silent) morphological encoding for compounds produced from regular plural forms relative to compounds formed from irregular plurals, replicating the ERP effect obtained for the L1 group. The L2 speakers’ overt productions, however, were significantly less consistent than those of the L1 speakers on the same task. We suggest that L2 speakers employ the same mechanisms for morphological encoding as L1 speakers, but with less reliance on grammatical constraints than L1 speakers. KW - event-related potentials (ERP) KW - plurals in compounds KW - morphological constraints KW - harmonic grammars KW - morphological processing Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.18002.jes SN - 1871-1340 SN - 1871-1375 VL - 13 IS - 2 SP - 186 EP - 214 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - GEN A1 - Jacob, Gunnar A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Introduction BT - priming paradigms in bilingualism research T2 - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - The present thematic set of studies comprises five concise review articles on the use of priming paradigms in different areas of bilingualism research. Their aim is to provide readers with a quick overview of how priming paradigms can be employed in particular subfields of bilingualism research and to make readers aware of the methodological issues that need to be considered when using priming techniques. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000135 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 21 IS - 3 SP - 435 EP - 436 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 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Paulmann, Silke A1 - Budd, Mary-Jane A1 - Barry, Christopher T1 - Morphological encoding beyond slots and fillers BT - an ERP study of comparative formation in English JF - PLoS one N2 - One important organizational property of morphology is competition. Different means of expression are in conflict with each other for encoding the same grammatical function. In the current study, we examined the nature of this control mechanism by testing the formation of comparative adjectives in English during language production. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded during cued silent production, the first study of this kind for comparative adjective formation. We specifically examined the ERP correlates of producing synthetic relative to analytic comparatives, e.g. angriervs. more angry. A frontal, bilaterally distributed, enhanced negative-going waveform for analytic comparatives (vis-a-vis synthetic ones) emerged approximately 300ms after the (silent) production cue. We argue that this ERP effect reflects a control mechanism that constrains grammatically-based computational processes (viz. more comparative formation). We also address the possibility that this particular ERP effect may belong to a family of previously observed negativities reflecting cognitive control monitoring, rather than morphological encoding processes per se. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199897 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 13 IS - 7 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - GEN A1 - Clahsen, Harald A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis T2 - Studies in second language acquisition N2 - Since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) was first put forward in 2006, it has inspired a growing body of research on grammatical processing in nonnative (L2) speakers. More than 10 years later, we think it is time for the SSH to be reconsidered in the light of new empirical findings and current theoretical assumptions about human language processing. The purpose of our critical commentary is twofold: to clarify some issues regarding the SSH and to sketch possible ways in which this hypothesis might be refined and improved to better account for L1 and L2 speakers’ performance patterns. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263117000250 SN - 0272-2631 SN - 1470-1545 VL - 40 IS - 3 SP - 693 EP - 706 PB - Cambridge University 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 - 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 - 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 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Verissimo, Joao Marques A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Inflectional morphology in bilingual language processing BT - An age-of-acquisition study JF - Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics N2 - This study addresses the question of how age of acquisition (AoA) affects grammatical processing, specifically with respect to inflectional morphology, in bilinguals. We examined experimental data of more than 100 participants from the Russian/German community in Berlin, all of whom acquired Russian from birth and German at different ages. Using the cross-modal lexical priming technique, we investigated stem allomorphs of German verbs that encode multiple morphosyntactic features. The results revealed a striking AoA modulation of observed priming patterns, indicating efficient access to morphosyntactic features for early AoAs and a gradual decline with increasing AoAs. In addition, we found a discontinuity in the function relating AoA to morphosyntactic feature access, suggesting a sensitive period for the development of morphosyntax. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2019.1570204 SN - 1048-9223 SN - 1532-7817 VL - 26 IS - 3 SP - 339 EP - 360 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - 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 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Accessing morphosyntax in L1 and L2 word recognition A priming study of inflected German adjectives JF - The mental lexicon N2 - In fusional languages, inflectional affixes may encode multiple morphosyntactic features such as case, number, and gender. To determine how these features are accessed during both native (L1) and non-native (L2) word recognition, the present study compares the results from a masked visual priming experiment testing inflected adjectives of German to those of a previous overt (cross-modal) priming experiment on the same phenomenon. While for the L1 group both experiments produced converging results, a group of highly-proficient Russian L2 learners of German showed native-like modulations of repetition priming effects under overt, but not under masked priming conditions. These results indicate that not only affixes but also their morphosyntactic features are accessible during initial form-based lexical access, albeit only for L1 and not for L2 processing. We argue that this contrast is in line with other findings suggesting that non-native language processing is less influenced by structural information than the L1. KW - morphosyntax KW - inflection KW - masked priming KW - late bilinguals Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.11.1.02bos SN - 1871-1340 SN - 1871-1375 VL - 11 SP - 26 EP - 54 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER -