Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T18:44:59.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

SECOND LANGUAGE USERS EXHIBIT SHALLOW MORPHOLOGICAL PROCESSING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2020

Yoonsang Song*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Youngah Do*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Arthur L. Thompson
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Eileen R. Waegemaekers
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
Jongbong Lee
Affiliation:
Nagoya University of Commerce & Business
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Yoonsang Song or Youngah Do, Department of Linguistics, University of Hong Kong, Rm 930, 9/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. E-mail: yoonsang@hku.hk (Y.S.) or youngah@hku.hk (Y.D.)
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Yoonsang Song or Youngah Do, Department of Linguistics, University of Hong Kong, Rm 930, 9/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. E-mail: yoonsang@hku.hk (Y.S.) or youngah@hku.hk (Y.D.)

Abstract

The present study tests the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH), which claims that compared to L1 processing, L2 language processing generally underuses grammatical information, prioritizing nongrammatical information. Specifically, this cross-modal priming study tests SSH at the level of morphology, investigating whether late advanced L2 learners construct hierarchically structured representations for trimorphemic derived words during real-time processing as native speakers do. Our results support SSH. In lexical decision on English trimorphemic words (e.g., unkindness or [[un-[kind]]-ness]), L1 recognition of the targets was facilitated by their bimorphemic morphological-structural constituent primes (e.g., unkind), but not by their bimorphemic nonconstituent primes (e.g., kindness), which were only semantically and formally related to the target. In contrast, L2 recognition was equally facilitated by both constituent and nonconstituent primes. These results suggest that unlike L1 processing, L2 processing of multimorphemic words is not mainly guided by detailed morphological structure, overrelying on nonstructural information.

Type
Research Report
Open Practices
Open data
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Footnotes

The experiment in this article earned an Open Data badge for transparent practices. The materials are available at https://osf.io/sa37y/

References

REFERENCES

Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 390412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bertram, R., Kuperman, V., Baayen, R. H., & Hyönä, J. (2011). The hyphen as a segmentation cue in triconstituent compound processing: It’s getting better all the time. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 52, 530544. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9450.2011.00914.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Balkhair, L., Schutter, J.-S., & Cunnings, I. (2013). The time course of morphological processing in a second language. Second Language Research, 29, 731. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658312464970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 342. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716406060024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2017). Some notes on the shallow structure hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40, 114. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263117000250.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Gerth, S., Heyer, V., & Schott, E. (2015). Morphology constrains native and non-native word formation in different ways: Evidence from plurals inside compounds. The Mental Lexicon, 10, 5387. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.10.1.03cla.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Neubauer, K. (2010). Morphology, frequency, and the processing of derived words in native and non-native speakers. Lingua, 120, 26272637. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2010.06.007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coughlin, C. E., & Tremblay, A. (2015). Morphological decomposition in native and non-native French speakers. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18, 524542. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728914000200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diependaele, K., Duñabeitia, J. A., Morris, J., & Keuleers, E. (2011). Fast morphological effects in first and second language word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 64, 344358. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.01.003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farhy, Y., Veríssimo, J., & Clahsen, H. (2018). Do late bilinguals access pure morphology during word recognition? A masked-priming study on Hebrew as a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 21, 17. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728918000032.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., Cunnings, I., Batterham, C., & Clahsen, H. (2012). The timing of island effects in nonnative sentence processing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34, 6798. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263111000507.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Felser, C., & Cuninings, I. A. N. (2012). Processing reflexives in a second language: The timing of structural and discourse-level constraints. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 571603. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716411000488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freynik, S., Gor, K., & O’Rourke, P. (2017). L2 processing of Arabic derivational morphology. The Mental Lexicon, 12, 2150. https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.12.1.02fre.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heyer, V., & Clahsen, H. (2015). Late bilinguals see a scan in scanner AND in scandal: Dissecting formal overlap from morphological priming in the processing of derived words. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18, 543550. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728914000662.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacob, G., Heyer, V., & Veríssimo, J. (2017). Aiming at the same target: A masked priming study directly comparing derivation and inflection in the second language. International Journal of Bilingualism, 22, 619637. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367006916688333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacob, G., Katsika, K., Family, N., & Allen, S. E. M. (2017). The role of constituent order and level of embedding in cross-linguistic structural priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 20, 269282. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728916000717.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434446. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2007.11.007.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. (2016). lmerTest package: Tests in linear mixed effects models. Journal of Statistical Software, 82, 126. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v082.i13.Google Scholar
Lieber, R. (1980). On the organization of the lexicon. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W. D., Tyler, L. K., Waksler, R., & Older, L. (1994). Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon. Psychological Review, 101, 333. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.101.1.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, M. J., El Karoui, I., Giber, K., Yang, X., Cohen, L., Koopman, H., Cash, S. S., Naccache, L., Hale, J. T., Dehaene, S., & Pallier, C. (2017). Neurophysiological dynamics of phrase-structure building during sentence processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114, E3669E3678. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1701590114.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schulz, B. (2006). Wh scope marking in English interlanguage grammars: Transfer and processing effects on the second language acquisition of English complex questions. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Mānoa, HI.Google Scholar
Selkirk, E. (1982). The syntax of words. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Song, Y. (2015). L2 Processing of Plural Inflection in English. Language Learning, 65, 233267. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Song, Y., Do, Y., Lee, J., Thompson, A., & Waegemaekers, E. (2019). The reality of hierarchical morphological structure in multimorphemic words. Cognition, 183, 269276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.10.015.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed