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 - Ciaccio, Laura Anna A1 - Jacob, Gunnar T1 - Native speakers like affixes, L2 speakers like letters? BT - An overt visual priming study investigating the role of orthography in L2 morphological processing JF - PLoS one N2 - In an overt visual priming experiment, we investigate the role of orthography in native (L1) and non-native (L2) processing of German morphologically complex words. We compare priming effects for inflected and derived morphologically related prime-target pairs versus otherwise matched, purely orthographically related pairs. The results show morphological priming effects in both the L1 and L2 group, with no significant difference between inflection and derivation. However, L2 speakers, but not L1 speakers, also showed significant priming for orthographically related pairs. Our results support the claim that L2 speakers focus more on surface-level information such as orthography during visual word recognition. This can cause orthographic priming effects in morphologically related prime-target pairs, which may conceal L1-L2 differences in morphological processing. Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226482 SN - 1932-6203 VL - 14 IS - 12 PB - PLoS CY - San Fransisco ER - TY - GEN 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 T2 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe 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. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 869 KW - prefixed words KW - derivation KW - second language processing KW - masked priming KW - morphology Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-517727 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 1 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 - Mosca, Michela T1 - Trilinguals’ language switching BT - A strategic and flexible account JF - The quarterly journal of experimental psychology N2 - The goal of this study was to determine how trilinguals select the language they intend to use in a language switching context. Two accounts are examined: (a) a language-specific account, according to which language selection considers the activation level of words of the intended language only (i.e., language co-activation without language competition), and (b) a language non-specific account, where activated words from both the intended and non-intended languages compete for selection (i.e., language co-activation with language competition). Results showed that, in both groups, all three languages competed for selection and that selection was achieved by inhibiting the currently non-relevant languages. Moreover, extending findings from previous research, the study reveals that, in both Experiments 1 and 2, the amount of inhibition was influenced not only by language proficiency but also by the typological similarity between languages. Overall, the study shows that language switching performance can be accounted for by a strategic and flexible inhibitory account. In particular, the controlling system is “strategic” in the sense that it aims at preventing potential conflicting situations, such as typological closeness between languages, and it is “flexible” in that it adjusts languages’ activation levels, depending on the conflict to be solved. KW - Language switching KW - language selection KW - trilingualism KW - inhibition KW - language typology Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818763537 SN - 1747-0218 SN - 1747-0226 VL - 72 IS - 4 SP - 693 EP - 716 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - THES A1 - Elin, Kirill T1 - Morphological processing in older adults T1 - Morphologische Verarbeitung bei älteren Erwachsenen BT - evidence from Russian and German BT - Evidenz aus dem Russischen und dem Deutschen N2 - Over the last decades mechanisms of recognition of morphologically complex words have been extensively examined in order to determine whether all word forms are stored and retrieved from the mental lexicon as wholes or whether they are decomposed into their morphological constituents such as stems and affixes. Most of the research in this domain focusses on English. Several factors have been argued to affect morphological processing including, for instance, morphological structure of a word (e.g., existence of allomorphic stem alternations) and its linguistic nature (e.g., whether it is a derived word or an inflected word form). It is not clear, however, whether processing accounts based on experimental evidence from English would hold for other languages. Furthermore, there is evidence that processing mechanisms may differ across various populations including children, adult native speakers and language learners. Recent studies claim that processing mechanisms could also differ between older and younger adults (Clahsen & Reifegerste, 2017; Reifegerste, Meyer, & Zwitserlood, 2017). The present thesis examined how properties of the morphological structure, types of linguistic operations involved (i.e., the linguistic contrast between inflection and derivation) and characteristics of the particular population such as older adults (e.g., potential effects of ageing as a result of the cognitive decline or greater experience and exposure of older adults) affect initial, supposedly automatic stages of morphological processing in Russian and German. To this end, a series of masked priming experiments was conducted. In experiments on Russian, the processing of derived -ost’ nouns (e.g., glupost’ ‘stupidity’) and of inflected forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in 1P.Sg.Pr. (e.g., igraju – igrat’ ‘to play’ vs. košu – kosit’ ‘to mow’) was examined. The first experiment on German examined and directly compared processing of derived -ung nouns (e.g., Gründung ‘foundation’) and inflected -t past participles (e.g., gegründet ‘founded’), whereas the second one investigated the processing of regular and irregular plural forms (-s forms such as Autos ‘cars’ and -er forms such as Kinder ‘children’, respectively). The experiments on both languages have shown robust and comparable facilitation effects for derived words and regularly inflected forms without stem changes (-t participles in German, forms of -aj verbs in Russian). Observed morphological priming effects could be clearly distinguished from purely semantic or orthographic relatedness between words. At the same time, we found a contrast between forms with and without allomorphic stem alternations in Russian and regular and irregular forms in German, with significantly more priming for unmarked stems (relative to alternated ones) and significantly more priming for regular (compared) word forms. These findings indicate the relevance of morphological properties of a word for initial stages of processing, contrary to claims made in the literature holding that priming effects are determined by surface form and meaning overlap only. Instead, our findings are more consistent with approaches positing a contrast between combinatorial, rule-based and lexically-stored forms (Clahsen, Sonnenstuhl, & Blevins, 2003). The doctoral dissertation also addressed the role of ageing and age-related cognitive changes on morphological processing. The results obtained on this research issue are twofold. On the one hand, the data demonstrate effects of ageing on general measures of language performance, i.e., overall longer reaction times and/or higher accuracy rates in older than younger individuals. These findings replicate results from previous studies, which have been linked to the general slowing of processing speed at older age and to the larger vocabularies of older adults. One the other hand, we found that more specific aspects of language processing appear to be largely intact in older adults as revealed by largely similar morphological priming effects for older and younger adults. These latter results indicate that initial stages of morphological processing investigated here by means of the masked priming paradigm persist in older age. One caveat should, however, be noted. Achieving the same performance as a younger individual in a behavioral task may not necessarily mean that the same neural processes are involved. Older people may have to recruit a wider brain network than younger individuals, for example. To address this and related possibilities, future studies should examine older people’s neural representations and mechanisms involved in morphological processing. N2 - In den letzten Jahrzehnten wurden die Mechanismen zur Erkennung morphologisch komplexer Wörter umfassend untersucht, um zu erforschen, ob alle Wortformen als Ganzes aus dem mentalen Lexikon abgerufen werden oder ob sie in ihre morphologischen Bestandteile (z. B. Wortstamm und Affixe) zerlegt werden. Der meisten Studien in diesem Bereich konzentrieren sich aufs Englische. Es wurde oft behauptet, dass mehrere Faktoren die morphologische Verarbeitung beeinflussen, darunter zum Beispiel die morphologische Struktur eines Wortes (z. B. das Vorhandensein allomorphischen Stammwechsels) und seine linguistische Natur (z. B. ob es sich um ein abgeleitetes Wort oder eine flektierte Wortform handelt). Es ist jedoch nicht klar, ob die postulierten Verarbeitungsmechanismen, die fast ausschließlich auf experimentellen Beweisen aus dem Englischen basieren, für andere Sprachen genauso gelten. Darüber hinaus gibt es Hinweise darauf, dass sich Verarbeitungsmechanismen in verschiedenen Bevölkerungsgruppen – einschließlich Kindern, erwachsenen Muttersprachlern und Sprachlernern – unterscheiden können. Neuere Studien behaupten, dass Verarbeitungsmechanismen zwischen älteren und jüngeren Erwachsenen möglicherweise auch unterschiedlich sind (Clahsen & Reifegerste, 2017; Reifegerste, Meyer, & Zwitserlood, 2017). In der vorliegenden Dissertation wurde untersucht, wie die morphologische Struktur, die Art der zugrunde liegenden linguistischen Operationen (z. B., der linguistische Kontrast zwischen Flexion und Ableitung) sowie Merkmale der jeweiligen Population, wie ältere Erwachsene (z. B. mögliche Auswirkungen des Alterns infolge kognitiven Rückgangs oder größerer Erfahrung von älteren Menschen) die ersten, vermeintlich automatischen Stadien der morphologischen Verarbeitung im Russischen und Deutschen beeinflussen. Zu diesem Zweck wurde eine Reihe von maskierten Priming Experimenten (auf English: masked priming) durchgeführt. In den Experimenten übers Russische wurde die Verarbeitung von abgeleiteten -ost'-Substantiven (z. B. glupost' - 'Dummheit') und von flektierten Formen mit und ohne allomorphischen Stammwechsel in der ersten Person Singular Präsens (z. B. igraju - igrat' 'spielen' im Vergleich zu košu - kosit' 'mähen') untersucht. Darüber hinaus wurden im ersten Experiment übers Deutsche die Verarbeitung von abgeleiteten Substantiven (z. B. Gründung 'founding') und von -t-Partizipien (z. B. gegründet 'founded') untersucht und direkt verglichen, während das zweite Experiment die Verarbeitung von regulären und irregulären Plural-Formen (d. h., -s-Pluralen wie z. B. Autos 'cars' und -er-Formen wie z. B, Kinder 'children') erforschte. Die Experimente in beiden Sprachen zeigten robuste und vergleichbare Priming-Effekte für abgeleitete Wörter und regelmäßig flektierte Formen ohne Stammveränderung (einschließlich -t-Partizipien im Deutschen und Formen von -aj- Verben im Russischen). Die gefundenen morphologischen Priming-Effekte konnten von rein semantischen oder orthographischen Verbindungen zwischen Wörtern klar abgegrenzt werden. Gleichzeitig fanden wir einen Kontrast zwischen Formen mit und ohne allomorphischen Stammwechsel im Russischen sowie zwischen regulären und irregulären Formen im Deutschen, mit signifikant mehr Priming für unmarkierte Stämme (im Vergleich zu alternierenden) und signifikant mehr Priming für reguläre Wortformen (im Vergleich zu irregulären). Diese Ergebnisse weisen auf die Relevanz morphologischer Eigenschaften eines Wortes für die ersten automatischen Phasen der Worterkennung hin, im Gegensatz zu Behauptungen in der fachlichen Literatur, die besagen, dass Priming-Effekte nur durch das Überlappen von Wörtern auf orthographischer und/oder semantischer Ebene entstehen. Stattdessen sind unsere Ergebnisse mehr im Einklang mit Ansätzen, die einen Kontrast zwischen kombinatorischen und regelbasierten versus lexikalisch gespeicherten Formen postulieren (Clahsen, Sonnenstuhl, & Blevins, 2003). Die Doktorarbeit befasste sich auch mit der Rolle des Alterns und altersbedingten kognitiven Veränderungen bei der morphologischen Verarbeitung. Die Ergebnisse dieses Forschungsthemas sind zweierlei. Einerseits demonstrieren die Daten die Auswirkungen des Alterns auf allgemeine Aspekte der Sprachleistung wie zum Beispiel generell längere Reaktionszeiten und/oder weniger Fehler bei älteren als bei jüngeren Personen. Ähnliche Ergebnisse in früheren Studien wurden oft mit allgemeiner Verringerung der Verarbeitungsgeschwindigkeit im höheren Alter und mit dem größeren Wortschatz älterer Erwachsener in Verbindung gebracht. Anderseits stellten wir fest, dass spezifische Aspekte der Sprachverarbeitung bei älteren Erwachsenen weitgehend intakt sind, was sich durch größtenteils vergleichbare morphologische Priming-Effekte für ältere und jüngere Erwachsene zeigt. Diese letzteren Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, dass die ersten Stadien der morphologischen Verarbeitung, die hier mittels maskierter Priming-Experimente untersucht wurden, im höheren Alter fortbestehen. Folgender Vorbehalt sollte jedoch beachtet werden: Das Erreichen der gleichen Leistung bei jüngeren und älteren Personen in solchen Aufgaben muss nicht unbedingt bedeuten, dass dieselben neuralen Prozesse beteiligt sind. Ältere Menschen müssen unter Umständen ein breiteres Gehirnnetzwerk rekrutieren als jüngere Menschen. Aus diesem Grund sollten zukünftige Studien auch die neuralen Repräsentationen und Mechanismen untersuchen, die an der morphologischen Verarbeitung bei jüngeren und älteren Menschen beteiligt sind. KW - morphology KW - processing KW - ageing KW - Russian KW - German KW - linguistics KW - Morphologie KW - Worterkennung KW - Altern KW - Russisch KW - Deutsch KW - Sprachwissenschaft Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-418605 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Arslan, Seçkin A1 - Gür, Eren A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Predicting the sources of impaired wh-question comprehension in non-fluent aphasia BT - a cross-linguistic machine learning study on Turkish and German JF - Cognitive neuropsychology N2 - This study investigates the comprehension of wh-questions in individuals with aphasia (IWA) speaking Turkish, a non-wh-movement language, and German, a wh-movement language. We examined six German-speaking and 11 Turkish-speaking IWA using picture-pointing tasks. Findings from our experiments show that the Turkish IWA responded more accurately to both object who and object which questions than to subject questions, while the German IWA performed better for subject which questions than in all other conditions. Using random forest models, a machine learning technique used in tree-structured classification, on the individual data revealed that both the Turkish and German IWA’s response accuracy is largely predicted by the presence of overt and unambiguous case marking. We discuss our results with regard to different theoretical approaches to the comprehension of wh-questions in aphasia. KW - Non-fluent aphasia KW - random forest algorithm KW - sentence comprehension KW - wh-in-situ KW - wh-questions KW - wh-movement Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/02643294.2017.1394284 SN - 0264-3294 SN - 1464-0627 VL - 34 SP - 312 EP - 331 PB - Taylor & Francis CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reifegerste, Jana A1 - Hauer, Franziska A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Agreement processing and attraction errors in aging BT - evidence from subject-verb agreement in German JF - Aging, neuropsychology, and cognition : a journal on normal and dysfunctional development N2 - Effects of aging on lexical processing are well attested, but the picture is less clear for grammatical processing. Where age differences emerge, these are usually ascribed to working-memory (WM) decline. Previous studies on the influence of WM on agreement computation have yielded inconclusive results, and work on aging and subject-verb agreement processing is lacking. In two experiments (Experiment 1: timed grammaticality judgment, Experiment 2: self-paced reading + WM test), we investigated older (OA) and younger (YA) adults’ susceptibility to agreement attraction errors. We found longer reading latencies and judgment reaction times (RTs) for OAs. Further, OAs, particularly those with low WM scores, were more accepting of sentences with attraction errors than YAs. OAs showed longer reading latencies for ungrammatical sentences, again modulated by WM, than YAs. Our results indicate that OAs have greater difficulty blocking intervening nouns from interfering with the computation of agreement dependencies. WM can modulate this effect. KW - Subject-verb agreement KW - attraction errors KW - aging KW - grammaticality judgment KW - self-paced reading Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13825585.2016.1251550 SN - 1382-5585 SN - 1744-4128 VL - 24 IS - 6 SP - 672 EP - 702 PB - Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reifegerste, Jana A1 - Meyer, Antje A1 - Zwitserlood, Pienie T1 - Inflectional complexity and experience affect plural processing in younger and older readers of Dutch and German JF - Language, cognition and neuroscience N2 - According to dual-route models of morphological processing, regular inflections can be retrieved as whole-word forms or decomposed into morphemes. Baayen, Dijkstra, and Schreuder [(1997). Singulars and plurals in Dutch: Evidence for a parallel dual-route model. Journal of Memory and Language, 37, 94–117. doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2509] proposed a dual-route model in which singular-dominant plurals (“brides”) are decomposed, while plural-dominant plurals (“peas”) are accessed as whole-word units. We report two lexical-decision experiments investigating how plural processing is influenced by participants’ age and morphological complexity of the language (German/Dutch). For all Dutch participants and older German participants, we replicated the interaction between number and dominance reported by Baayen and colleagues. Younger German participants showed a main effect of number, indicating decomposition of all plurals. Access to stored forms seems to depend on morphological richness and experience with word forms. The data pattern fits neither full-decomposition nor full-storage models, but is compatible with dual-route models. KW - Morphological processing KW - morphological complexity KW - ageing KW - lexical decision KW - plural processing Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2016.1247213 SN - 2327-3798 SN - 2327-3801 VL - 32 IS - 4 SP - 471 EP - 487 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Boxell, Oliver A1 - Felser, Claudia A1 - Cunnings, Ian T1 - Antecedent contained deletions in native and non-native sentence processing JF - Linguistic approaches to bilingualism N2 - We report the results from an eye-movement monitoring study investigating native (L1) and non-native (L2) speakers’ real-time processing of antecedent-contained deletion (ACD), a type of verb phrase ellipsis in which the ellipsis gap forms part of its own antecedent. The resulting interpretation problem is traditionally thought to be solved by quantifier raising, a covert scope-shifting operation that serves to remove the gap from within its antecedent. Our L2 group comprised advanced, native German-speaking L2 learners of English. The analysis of the eye-movement data showed that both L1 and L2 English speakers tried to recover the missing verb phrase after encountering the gap. Only the native speakers showed evidence of ellipsis resolution being affected by quantification, however. No effects of quantification following gap detection were found in the L2 group, by contrast, indicating that recovery of the elided material was accomplished independently from the object’s quantificational status in this group. KW - L2 processing KW - eye-movement monitoring KW - antecedent contained deletion Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15006.box SN - 1879-9264 SN - 1879-9272 VL - 7 IS - 5 SP - 554 EP - 582 PB - John Benjamins Publishing Co. CY - Amsterdam ER -