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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.
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.
Using the eye-movement monitoring technique in two reading comprehension experiments, this study investigated the timing of constraints on wh-dependencies (so-called island constraints) in first- and second-language (L1 and L2) sentence processing. The results show that both L1 and L2 speakers of English are sensitive to extraction islands during processing, suggesting that memory storage limitations affect L1 and L2 comprehenders in essentially the same way. Furthermore, these results show that the timing of island effects in L1 compared to L2 sentence comprehension is affected differently by the type of cue (semantic fit versus filled gaps) signaling whether dependency formation is possible at a potential gap site. Even though L1 English speakers showed immediate sensitivity to filled gaps but not to lack of semantic fit, proficient German-speaking learners of English as a L2 showed the opposite sensitivity pattern. This indicates that initial wh-dependency formation in L2 processing is based on semantic feature matching rather than being structurally mediated as in L1 comprehension.
This study presents results from a cross-modal priming experiment investigating inflected verb forms of German. A group of late learners of German with Russian as their native language (L1) was compared to a control group of German L1 speakers. The experiment showed different priming patterns for the two participant groups. The L1 German data yielded a stem-priming effect for inflected forms involving regular affixation and a partial priming effect for irregular forms irrespective of stem allomorphy. By contrast, the data from the late bilinguals showed reduced priming effects for both regular and irregular forms. We argue that late learners rely more on lexically stored inflected word forms during word recognition and less on morphological parsing than native speakers.
We report findings from psycholinguistic experiments investigating the detailed timing of processing morphologically complex words by proficient adult second (L2) language learners of English in comparison to adult native (L1) speakers of English. The first study employed the masked priming technique to investigate -ed forms with a group of advanced Arabic-speaking learners of English. The results replicate previously found L1/L2 differences in morphological priming, even though in the present experiment an extra temporal delay was offered after the presentation of the prime words.
The second study examined the timing of constraints against inflected forms inside derived words in English using the eye-movement monitoring technique and an additional acceptability judgment task with highly advanced Dutch L2 learners of English in comparison to adult L1 English controls. Whilst offline the L2 learners performed native-like, the eye-movement data showed that their online processing was not affected by the morphological constraint against regular plurals inside derived words in the same way as in native speakers. Taken together, these findings indicate that L2 learners are not just slower than native speakers in processing morphologically complex words, but that the L2 comprehension system employs real-time grammatical analysis (in this case, morphological information) less than the L1 system.
Regular and irregular inflection in children's production has been examined in many previous studies. Yet, little is known about the processes involved in children's recognition of inflected words. To gain insight into how children process inflected words, the current study examines regular -t and irregular -n participles of German using the cross-modal priming technique testing 108 monolingual German-speaking children in two age groups (group I, mean age: 8;4, group II, mean age: 9;9) and a control group of.. adults. Although both age groups of children had the same full priming effect as adults for -t forms, only children of age group II showed an adult-like (partial) priming effect for -n participles. We argue that children (within the age range tested) employ the same mechanisms for regular inflection as adults but that the lexical retrieval processes required for irregular forms become more efficient when children get older.
Masked priming research with late (non-native) bilinguals has reported facilitation effects following morphologically derived prime words (scanner - scan). However, unlike for native speakers, there are suggestions that purely orthographic prime-target overlap (scandal - scan) also produces priming in non-native visual word recognition. Our study directly compares orthographically related and derived prime-target pairs. While native readers showed morphological but not formal overlap priming, the two prime types yielded the same magnitudes of facilitation for non-natives. We argue that early word recognition processes in a non-native language are more influenced by surface-form properties than in one's native language.
Extract: Topics in psycholinguistics and the neurocognition of language rarely attract the attention of journalists or the general public. One topic that has done so, however, is the potential benefits of bilingualism for general cognitive functioning and development, and as a precaution against cognitive decline in old age. Sensational claims have been made in the public domain, mostly by journalists and politicians. Recently (September 4, 2014) The Guardian reported that “learning a foreign language can increase the size of your brain”, and Michael Gove, the UK's previous Education Secretary, noted in an interview with The Guardian (September 30, 2011) that “learning languages makes you smarter”. The present issue of BLC addresses these topics by providing a state-of-the-art overview of theoretical and experimental research on the role of bilingualism for cognition in children and adults.
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.
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.