Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-wlg5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T01:40:53.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Morphologically complex words in L1 and L2 processing: Evidence from masked priming experiments in English*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

RENITA SILVA  and
HARALD CLAHSEN
RENITA SILVA
Affiliation:
University of Essex
HARALD CLAHSEN*
Affiliation:
University of Essex
*
Address for correspondence: Harald Clahsen, Department of Linguistics, University of Essex, Colchester, C04 3SQ, UKharald@essex.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper reports results from masked priming experiments investigating regular past-tense forms and deadjectival nominalizations with -ness and -ity in adult native (L1) speakers of English and in different groups of advanced adult second language (L2) learners of English. While the L1 group showed efficient priming for both inflected and derived word forms, the L2 learners demonstrated repetition-priming effects (like the L1 group), but no priming for inflected and reduced priming for derived word forms. We argue that this striking contrast between L1 and L2 processing supports the view that adult L2 learners rely more on lexical storage and less on combinatorial processing of morphologically complex words than native speakers.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , July 2008 , pp. 245 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Jim Blevins, Ian Cunnings, Sonja Eisenbeiss, Claudia Felser, Roger Hawkins, Hui-Yu Pan, Mika Sato, Michael Ullman, João Verissimo, and two anonymous BLC reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.

References

Allan, D. 1992. Oxford Placement Test. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Allen, M. & Badecker, W. 2002. Inflectional regularity: Probing the nature of lexical representation in a cross-modal priming task. Journal of Memory and Language, 46, 705–722.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, S. R. 1992. A-morphous morphology. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, M. 1994. Morphology by itself. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R. & van Rijn, H. 1993. The CELEX lexical database (CD ROM). Philadelphia, PA: Linguistic Data Consortium.Google Scholar
Baumann, N., Nagengast, J. & Klaas, G. 1993. New Experimental Setup (NESU). Ms., MPI for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S. & Marslen-Wilson, W. 2005. Discontinuous morphology in time: Incremental masked priming in Arabic. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20, 207–260.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brovetto, C. & Ullman, M. 2001. First vs. second language: A differential reliance on grammatical computations and lexical memory. Poster presented at the 14th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. 1999. Lexical entries and rules of language: A multidisciplinary study of German inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 991–1060.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H. 2006. Linguistic perspectives on morphological processing. In Wunderlich, (ed.), pp. 355–388.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. & Felser, C. 2006a. How native-like is non-native language processing? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10, 564–570.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clahsen, H. & Felser, C. 2006b. Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 3–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., Sonnenstuhl, I. & Blevins, J. P. 2003. Derivational morphology in the German mental lexicon: A dual-mechanism account. In Baayen, H. & Schreuder, R. (eds.), Morphological structure in language processing, pp. 125–155. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, C. & Lupker, S. 2006. Masked inhibitory priming in English: Evidence for lexical inhibition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 668–687.Google ScholarPubMed
Felser, C. & Roberts, L. 2007. Processing wh-dependencies in a second language: A cross-modal priming study. Second Language Research, 23, 9–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Forster, K. I. 1999. The microgenesis of priming effects in lexical access. Brain and Language, 68, 5–15.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Forster, K. I. & Davis, C. 1984. Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 680–698.Google Scholar
Forster, K. I., Mohan, K. & Hector, J. 2003. The mechanics of masked priming. In Kinoshita, S. & Lupker, S. J. (eds.), Masked priming: State of the art, pp. 3–37. Hove: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Friederici, A. 2002. Towards a neural basis of auditory sentence processing. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 78–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frost, R., Kugler, T., Deutsch, A. & Forster, K. 2005. Orthographic structure versus morphological structure: Principles of lexical organization in a given language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 31, 1293–1326.Google Scholar
Hahne, A., Müller, J. & Clahsen, H. 2006. Morphological processing in a second language: Behavioral and event-related brain potential evidence for storage and decomposition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 121–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, R. & Chan, C. 1997. The partial availability of UG in second language acquisition: The “failed functional features hypothesis”. Second Language Research, 13, 187–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernandez, A., Ping, L. & MacWhinney, B. 2005. The emergence of competing modules in bilingualism. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 220–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Indefrey, P. 2006. A meta-analysis of hemodynamic studies on first and second language processing: Which suggested differences can we trust and what do they mean? Language Learning, 56, 279–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, R. & Pinker, S. 2005. The nature of the language faculty and its implications for evolution of language. Cognition, 97, 211–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lardiere, D. 2000. Mapping features to forms in second language acquisition. In Archibald, J. (ed.), Second language acquisition and linguistic theory, pp. 102–129. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lavric, A., Clapp, C. & Rastle, K. 2007. ERP evidence of morphological analysis from orthography: A masked priming study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19, 866–877.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marinis, T., Roberts, L., Felser, C. & Clahsen, H. 2005. Gaps in second language sentence processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 53–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W. & Tyler, L. K. 1998. Rules, representations, and the English past tense. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2, 428–435.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marslen-Wilson, W. D., Tyler, L. K., Waksler, R. & Older, L. 1994. Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon. Psychological Review, 101, 3–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, P. H. 1991. Morphology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClelland, J. L. & Patterson, K. 2002. Rules or connections in past-tense inflections: What does the evidence rule out? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 465–472.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDonald, J. 2006. Beyond the critical period: Processing-based explanations for poor grammaticality judgment performance by late second language learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 55, 381–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisel, J. M. 1991. Principles of Universal Grammar and strategies of language use. In Eubank, L. (ed.), Point-counterpoint: Universal grammar in the second language, pp. 231–276. Amsterdam: Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, J. 2005. Electrophysiological correlates of second language processing. Second Language Research, 21, 152–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Münte, T., Say, T., Clahsen, H., Schiltz, K. & Kutas, M. 1999. Decomposition of morphologically complex words in English: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Cognitive Brain Research, 7, 241–253.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parodi, T., Schwartz, B. D. & Clahsen, H. 2004. On the L2 acquisition of the morphosyntax of German nominals. Linguistics, 42, 669–705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penke, M. 2006. The representation of inflectional morphology in the mental lexicon. An overview of psycho- and neurolinguistic methods and results. In Wunderlich, (ed.), pp. 389–428.Google Scholar
Perani, D. & Abutalebi, J. 2005. The neural basis of first and second language processing. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 15, 202–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinker, S. 1999. Words and rules: The ingredients of language. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. & Ullman, M. T. 2002. The past and future of the past tense. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 456–463.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Plaut, D. & Gonnerman, L. M. 2000. Are non-semantic morphological effects incompatible with a distributed connectionist approach to language processing? Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 445–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prévost, P. & White, L. 2000. Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language acquisition? Evidence from tense and agreement. Second Language Research, 16, 103–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rastle, K., Davis, M. H., Marslen-Wilson, W. & Tyler, L. K. 2000. Morphological and semantic effects in visual word recognition: A time-course study. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 507–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rastle, K., Davis, M. H. & New, B. 2004. The broth in my brother's brothel: Morpho-orthographic segmentation in visual word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 1, 1090–1098.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Münte, T. & Clahsen, H. 2002. Morphological priming in Spanish verb forms: An ERP repetition priming study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 443–454.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sabourin, L. & Haverkort, M. 2003. Neural substrates of representation and processing of a second language. In Van Hout, R., Hulk, A., Kuiken, F. & Towell, R. (eds.), The lexicon–syntax interface in second language acquisition, pp. 175–195. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sakaguchi, K. 2006. Morphological processing of inflection in native speakers and second language learners of English: A masked priming study. MA dissertation, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Seidenberg, M. S. & Gonnerman, L. M 2000. Explaining derivational morphology as the convergence of codes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 353–361.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sonnenstuhl, I., Eisenbeiss, S. & Clahsen, H. 1999. Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon. Cognition, 72, 203–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stanners, R. F., Neiser, J. J., Hernon, W. P. & Hall, R. 1979. Memory representation for morphologically related words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 399–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stump, G. T. 2001. Inflectional morphology: A theory of paradigm structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ullman, M. T. 2001. The neural basis of lexicon and grammar in first and second language: The declarative/procedural model. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 4, 105–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ullman, M. T. 2004. Contributions of memory circuits to language: The declarative/procedural model. Cognition, 92, 231–270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ullman, M. T. 2005. A cognitive neuroscience perspective on second language acquisition: The declarative/procedural model. In Sanz, C. (ed.), Mind and context in adult second language acquisition: Methods, theory, and practice, pp. 141–178. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Weber, A. & Cutler, A. 2003. Lexical competition in non-native spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wunderlich, D. (ed.) 2006. Advances in the theory of the lexicon. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar