- search hit 1 of 1
Selective effects of age of acquisition on morphological priming
- 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.
Author details: | Joao Marques VerissimoORCiDGND, Vera HeyerGND, Gunnar JacobORCiD, Harald ClahsenORCiDGND |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2017.1346104 |
ISSN: | 1048-9223 |
ISSN: | 1532-7817 |
Title of parent work (English): | Language acquisition : a journal of developmental linguistics |
Subtitle (English): | evidence for a sensitive period |
Publisher: | Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |
Place of publishing: | Abingdon |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2018 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2022/03/24 |
Volume: | 25 |
Issue: | 3 |
Number of pages: | 12 |
First page: | 315 |
Last Page: | 326 |
Organizational units: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Bildungswissenschaften |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung / 370 Bildung und Erziehung |
4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache | |
Peer review: | Referiert |
Publishing method: | Open Access / Bronze Open-Access |
License (German): | CC-BY-NC - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell 4.0 International |
External remark: | Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 486 |