Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Morphological processing, second language acquisition, masked priming »

This study extends research on morphological processing in late bilinguals to a rarely examined language type, Semitic, by reporting results from a masked-priming experiment with 58 non-native, advanced, second-language (L2) speakers of Hebrew in comparison with native (L1) speakers. We took advantage of a case of ‘pure morphology’ in Hebrew, the so-called binyanim, which represent (essentially arbitrary) morphological classes for verbs. Our results revealed a non-native priming pattern for the L2 group, with root-priming effects restricted to non-finite prime words irrespective of binyanim type. We conclude that root extraction in L2 Hebrew word recognition is less sensitive to both morphological and morphosyntactic cues than in the L1, in line with the Shallow-Structure Hypothesis of L2 processing.

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: We compared the processing of morphologically complex derived vs. inflected forms in native speakers of German and highly proficient native Russian second language (L2) learners of German. Design/methodology/approach: We measured morphological priming effects for derived and inflected German words. To ensure that priming effects were genuinely morphological, the design also contained semantic and orthographic control conditions. Data and analysis: 40 native speakers of German and 36 native Russian learners of L2 German participated in a masked-priming lexical-decision experiment. For both participant groups, priming effects for derived vs. inflected words were compared using linear mixed effects models. Findings/conclusions: While first language (L1) speakers showed similar facilitation effects for both derived and inflected primes, L2 speakers showed a difference between the two prime types, with robust priming effects only for derived, but not for inflected forms. Originality: Unlike in previous studies investigating derivation and inflection in L2 processing, priming effects for derived and inflected prime–target pairs were determined on the basis of the same target word, allowing for a direct comparison between the two morphological phenomena. In this respect, this is the first study to directly compare the processing of derived vs. inflected forms in L2 speakers. Significance/implications: The results are inconsistent with accounts predicting general L1/L2 differences for all types of morphologically complex forms as well as accounts assuming that L1 and L2 processing are based on the same mechanisms. We discuss theoretical implications for L2 processing mechanisms, and propose an explanation which can account for the data pattern.

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.

This study investigates whether late second/foreign language (L2) learners can rely on mechanisms similar to those of native speakers for processing morphologically complex words. Specifically, it examines whether native English speakers who have begun learning French around the onset of puberty can decompose -er (Class I) French verbs. Mid-to-high-proficiency L2 learners and native French speakers completed a masked-priming word-naming task. Latencies for morphologically related, orthographically related, and semantically related prime–target combinations were compared to latencies for identical and unrelated prime–target combinations. The results reveal the following effects: full morphological priming for both native and non-native speakers, with this effect increasing with French proficiency for L2 learners; partial orthographic priming for both groups; greater priming in the morphological condition than in the orthographic condition for both groups; and no semantic priming for either group. We conclude that L2 learners have access to similar mechanisms to those of native speakers for processing morphologically complex words.

AbstractResearch into nonnative (L2) morphological processing has produced largely conflicting findings. To contribute to the discussions surrounding the contradictory findings in the literature, we examined L2 morphological priming effects along with a transposed-letter (TL) methodology. Critically, we also explored the potential effects of individual differences in the reading networks of L2 speakers using a test battery of reading proficiency. A masked primed lexical decision experiment was carried out in which the same target (e.g., ALLOW) was preceded by a morphological prime (allowable), a TL-within prime (allwoable), an substituted letter (SL)-within prime (allveable), a TL-across prime (alloawble), an SL-across prime (alloimble), or an unrelated prime (believable). The average data yielded morphological priming but no significant TL priming. However, the results of an exploratory analysis of the potential effects of individual differences suggested that individual variability mediated the group-level priming patterns in L2 speakers. TL-within and TL-across priming effects were obtained only when the performance of participants on nonword reading was considered, while the magnitude of the morphological priming effects diminished as the knowledge of vocabulary expanded. The results highlight the importance of considering individual differences while testing L2 populations.

Abstract In this article we discuss methods for investigating grammatical processing in bilinguals. We will present a methodological approach that relies on: (i) linguistic theory (in our case, morphology) for the construction of experimental materials; (ii) a design that allows for direct (within-experiment, within-participant, and within-item) comparisons of the critical conditions; and (iii) data analysis techniques that make both linear and non-linear gradient effects visible. We review recent studies of masked morphological priming in bilinguals in which the application of these methodological principles revealed highly selective interactions of age of acquisition (and the native/non-native contrast) with the linguistic distinction between inflection and derivation. We believe that such considerations are not only relevant for grammatical processing experiments, but also for studying bilingualism, and its potential cognitive advantages, more generally.

German participles offer a distinction between regular forms that are suffixed with –t and do not exhibit any stem changes and irregular forms that all have the ending –n and sometimes undergo (largely unpredictable) stem changes. This article reports the results from a series of psycholinguistic experiments (acceptability judgments, lexical decision, and masked priming) that investigate regular and irregular participle forms in adult native speakers of German in comparison to advanced adult second language (L2) learners of German with Polish as their first language (L1). The most striking L1-L2 contrasts were found for regular participles. Although the L1 group’s performance was influenced by the combinatorial structure of regular participle forms, this was not the case for the L2 group. These findings suggest that adult L2 learners are less sensitive to morphological structure than native speakers and rely more on lexical storage than on morphological parsing during processing.

Spanish–English bilingual lexical organization was investigated using masked cognate and non-cognate priming with the lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, three groups of bilinguals (Spanish dominant, English dominant and Balanced) and a single group of beginning bilinguals (Spanish) were tested with Spanish and English targets primed by cognate and non-cognate translations. All the bilingual groups showed cognate but not non-cognate priming. This cognate priming effect was similar in magnitude to the within-language repetition priming effect; it did not vary across participants who had different second-language acquisition histories, nor was the size of the priming effect modulated by the direction of the translation. The beginning bilingual group only showed cognate priming when the primes were in Spanish (L1) and the targets in English (L2). In Experiment 2, both form-related and unrelated word baselines were used with a single group of bilinguals. The results were the same as Experiment 1: cognate priming and no non-cognate priming. Experiment 3 examined the cognate priming effect with reduced orthographic and phonological overlap. Despite this reduced form overlap, it was found that the cognate effect was the same size as the within-language repetition effect. These results indicate that cognate translations are special and ways of modifying models of bilingual lexical processing to reflect this were considered.

Objectives/Research Questions: Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of morphological knowledge on second language (L2) online processing of derivational words by Chinese first language (L1)–English L2 learners. Methodology: Experiment 1 was performed at the single word level with a masked priming paradigm using the lexical decision task. Experiment 2 was conducted at the sentence level with a self-paced reading paradigm. According to their performance on the morphological knowledge test, the Chinese (L1)–English (L2) learners were grouped into two groups: a high morphological knowledge group and a low morphological knowledge group; and these were matched for proficiency. Data and Analysis: Data were analyzed using a repeated-measures analysis of variance. In Experiment 1, mean response times and accuracy of the derived suffixed primes were analyzed between the two groups. In Experiment 2, mean response times in the regions of interest were analyzed between the two groups. Findings/Conclusions: In Experiment 1, results showed that a full priming effect was evident in the group with high morphological knowledge, indicating application of rule-based decompositions, whereas this effect was not observed in the group with low morphological knowledge. In Experiment 2, the group with high morphological knowledge had a significant processing cost in processing the derivational words, suggesting the employment of rule-governed decomposition. These results suggest that morphological knowledge plays an important role in online L2 morphological processing. Originality: In L2 morphology literature, the current study empirically explored the role of morphological knowledge in derivational processing. Significance/Implications: The study suggested that improvements in morphological knowledge can facilitate the rule-based processing of L2.

Since it was introduced in Forster and Davis (1984), masked priming has been widely adopted in the psycholinguistic research on visual word recognition, but there has been little consensus on its actual mechanisms, i.e. how it occurs and how it should be interpreted. This dissertation addresses two different interpretations of masked priming, one based on the Interactive Activation Model (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981), in which priming is seen as a result of persisting activation from the prime, the other based on the Entry Opening Model (Forster & Davis, 1984), which sees priming as a savings effect. Five experiments are reported testing contrasting hypotheses about the role of prime duration and prime-target asynchrony (SOA) in masked priming using both identity and form priming. Overall, this dissertation lends support to the Entry Opening Model, demonstrating that masked priming is essentially a savings effect, and that as such, it is determined by the SOA, not the prime duration per se.

In general, L2 learners have great difficulty mastering aspects of grammar in the second language. For example, Chinese-speaking ESL learners often fail to mark past tense in their speaking and writing (Aaronson & Ferres, 1987; Bayley, 1991; Bean & Gergen, 1990; Jia & Fuse, 2007; Krashen & Pon, 1975; Lardiere, 1998; Wei, 2000), and there are some suggestions in the literature that Chinese learners of English never master English tense (Lardiere, 1998). One question that arises is whether the failure to learn to use the past tense is due to a failure of competence or a failure of performance. If the former, then Chinese-speaking ESL learners should show such failures in all tasks including comprehension tasks.However, little research has investigated L2 comprehension of tense marking in reading. The studies (Gass, 2001; Guillelmon & Grosjean, 2001; Jiang, 2004, 2007) have showed that late L2 learners are not sensitive to certain types of grammatical marking. They have poor inflectional comprehension. It is possible that Chinese English-language learners are insensitive to grammatical violation involving tense during reading. This dissertation tests this idea.A group of English-proficient college students from Fu-Jen University in Taiwan was tested in a number of tasks. In paper-and-pencil tests, Chinese English-language learners showed knowledge of the past tense forms and the appropriate contexts for their usage. This suggests that past tense marking is learnable. Chinese English-language learners can acquire this knowledge. Does the relative mastery of past tense show up in comprehension in a similar L2 population? A reading comprehension test that measured reading time to sequential segments of a sentence indicated that unlike native speakers of English who were tested, Chinese English-language learners were insensitive to grammatical violation involving tense. This finding is consistent with the other studies, indicating that L2 learners are insensitive to grammatical marking during reading.Overall, it appears that high-functioning Chinese English-language learners can learn almost the proper way to use tense, but fail to do so during performance.

The present work focuses on the organization of the mental lexicon in native and non-native speakers and aims at investigating whether words are connected in the mind in terms of morphological criteria, i.e., through a network of associations establishing when a co-occurrence of form and meaning is found. Psycholinguistic research on native lexical access has demonstrated that morphology indeed underlies the organization of the mental lexicon, even though controversies about the locus of this level of organization remain. On the other hand, research in the field of second language acquisition has only recently turned to investigate such issues and its findings so far have been controversial. Specifically, the debate centers on whether native and non-native speakers share the same processing systems. According to recent proposals (Heyer & Clahsen 2015), this would not be the case and L2 processing would be more affected by formal rather than morphological criteria. In this light, the present work is aimed at verifying the impact of formal characteristics in native and non-native lexical access focusing on the processing of formally transparent versus non-transparent words in Italian. Two morphological phenomena are investigated by means of four psycholinguistic experiments involving a lexical decision task combined with the masked priming paradigm. Experiments 1 & 2 compare the processing of allomorphic vs non-allomorphic derivatives, to investigate whether formal alterations impair the appreciation of the relationship between two morphologically related words. Experiments 3 & 4 are focused on lack of base autonomy found in so-called bound stems, i.e., stems which cannot occur in isolation and are aimed at determining whether the processing of free and bound stems differs. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 indicate that allomorphic variation does not influence the associations established among related words in native speakers, in line with the predictions that can be formulated within usage-based perspectives on language. Non-native speakers, on the other hand, seem to be more pervasively affected by the phonological/orthographical properties of words, but not to the point that transparent morphological relations can be reduced to mere form overlap shared by morphological relatives. Likewise, stem autonomy was not found to affect the way words containing bound and free stems are processed by native speakers, at least under certain conditions, suggesting that boundedness is not an issue influencing the establishment of morphological relationships among words. Non-native speakers, however, were found to be sensitive to the isolability of the stem, in a way that suggests that free bases may be more salient morphological units for them, as opposed to bound stems, which are seemingly more closely associated with orthographic strings resembling each other. Taken together, the findings of the present work suggest a model of the native mental lexicon based on words and morphological schemas emerging from the relationships establishing among them, despite phonological variations and stem boundedness. While it is unclear whether such a system of connections and schemas is equally strong in the non-native lexicon, morphological relationships still appear to drive lexical organization. Crucially, however, such organization is modulated by form, as demonstrated by the effects of phonological variations and lack of base autonomy.