Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:35:53.929Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

L1 and L2 processing of compound words: Evidence from masked priming experiments in English*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2015

MAN LI ,
NAN JIANG  and
KIRA GOR
MAN LI*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
NAN JIANG
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
KIRA GOR
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
*
Address for correspondence: Man Li, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, 3215 Jiménez Hall, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USAmanli@umd.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study reports results from a series of masked priming experiments investigating early automatic processes involved in the visual recognition of English bimorphemic compounds in native and non-native processing. Results show that NSs produced robust and statistically equivalent masked priming effects with semantically transparent (e.g., toothbrush-TOOTH) and opaque (e.g., honeymoon-HONEY) compound primes, but no priming with orthographic controls (e.g., restaurant-REST), irrespective of constituent position. Similarly, advanced Chinese learners of English also produced robust and statistically equivalent priming effects with transparent and opaque compound primes in both positions. However, a clear orthographic priming effect was observed in the word-initial overlap position but no such effect in the word-final position. We argue that L2 compound priming originates from a different source from form priming. We conclude that these findings lend support to the sublexical morpho-orthographic decomposition mechanism underlying early English compound recognition not only in L1 but also in L2 processing.

Keywords

masked primingcompoundsmorphological processingEnglish as a second languagelate bilinguals
Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 20 , Special Issue 2: Cross-linguistic Priming in Bilinguals: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Language Processing, Acquisition and Change , March 2017 , pp. 384 - 402
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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

*

We would like to thank Qian Zhou for her help with part of the data collection for this project. We would also like to thank Robert DeKeyser and the anonymous BLC reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Any errors that remain are our own.

References

Alegre, M., & Gordon, P. (1999). Frequency effects and the representational status of regular inflections. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 41–61.Google Scholar
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 (4), 390–412.Google Scholar
Balota, D. A., Yap, M. J., Cortese, M. J., Hutchison, K. A., Kessler, B., Loftis, B., Neely, J. H., Nelson, D. L., Simpson, G. B., & Treiman, R. (2007). The English Lexicon Project. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445–459.Google Scholar
Basnight-Brown, D. M., Chen, L., Hua, S., Kostić, A., & Feldman, L. B. (2007). Monolingual and bilingual recognition of regular and irregular English verbs: Sensitivity to form similarity varies with first language experience. Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 65–80.Google Scholar
Bozic, M., Tyler, L. K., Su, L., Wingfield, C., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2013). Neurobiological systems for lexical representation and analysis in English. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25 (10), 1678–1691.Google Scholar
Bozic, M., Tyler, L. K., Ives, D. T., Randall, B., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2010). Bihemispheric foundations for human speech comprehension. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 107 (40), 17439–17444.Google Scholar
Butterworth, B. (1983). Lexical representation. In Butterworth, B. (Ed.), Language Production: Vol. 2 (pp. 257–294). London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, C., Wang, M., & Perfetti, C. A. (2011). Acquisition of compound words in Chinese–English bilingual children: Decomposition and cross-language activation. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 583–600.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H. (1999). Lexical entries and rules of language: A multidisciplinary study of German inflection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, 991–1060.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Balkhair, L., Schutter, J., & Cunnings, I. (2013). The time course of morphological processing in a second language. Second Language Research, 29 (1), 7–31.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Felser, C., Neubauer, K., Sato, M., & Silva, R. (2010). Morphological Structure in Native and Nonnative Language Processing. Language Learning, 60 (1), 21–43.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., & Neubauer, K. (2010). Morphology, frequency, and the processing of derived words in native and non-native speakers. Lingua, 120, 2627–2637.Google Scholar
Clahsen, H., Sonnenstuhl, I., & Blevins, J. P. (2003). Derivational morphology in the German mental lexicon: A dual mechanism account. In Baayen, R. H., & Schreuder, R. (Eds.), Morphological structure in language processing (pp. 125–155). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Crepaldi, D., Rastle, K., Coltheart, M., & Nickels, L. (2010). ‘Fell’ primes ‘fall’, but does ‘bell’ prime ‘ball’? Masked priming with irregularly-inflected primes. Journal of Memory and Language, 63, 83–99.Google Scholar
De Cat, C., Klepousniotou, E., & Baayen, R. H. (2015). Representational deficit or processing effect? An electrophysiological study of noun-noun compound processing by very advanced L2 speakers of English. Frontiers in Psychology, 6 Google 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, 344–358.Google Scholar
Diependaele, K., Sandra, D., & Grainger, J. (2005). Masked cross-modal morphological priming: Unravelling morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic influences in early word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20 (1–2), 75–114.Google Scholar
Diependaele, K., Sandra, D., & Grainger, J. (2009). Semantic transparency and masked morphological priming: The case of prefixed words. Memory & Cognition, 37 (6), 895–908.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dressler, W. U. (2006). Compound types. In Libben, G., & Jarema, G. (Eds.), The representation and processing of compound words (pp. 23–44). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feldman, L. B., Kostić, A., Basnight-Brown, D. M., Filipović-Đurđević, D., & Pastizzo, M. J. (2010). Morphological facilitation for regular and irregular verb formations in native and non-native speakers: Little evidence for two distinct mechanisms. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13 (02), 119–135.Google Scholar
Feldman, L. B., Kostić, A., Gvozdenović, V., O’Connor, P. A., & Moscoso del Prado Martín, F. (2012). Semantic similarity influences early morphological priming in Serbian: A challenge to form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19 (4), 668–676.Google Scholar
Feldman, L. B., O’Connor, P. A., & Moscoso del Prado Martín, F. (2009). Early morphological processing is morphosemantic and not simply morpho-orthographic: A violation of form-then-meaning accounts of word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16 (4), 684–691.Google Scholar
Field, A. (2013). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics : and sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Los Angeles: Sage.Google Scholar
Fiorentino, R., & Fund-Reznicek, E. (2009). Masked morphological priming of compound constituents. The Mental Lexicon, 4 (2), 159–193.Google Scholar
Forster, K. I., & Davis, C. (1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10 (4), 680–698.Google Scholar
Giraudo, H., & Grainger, J. (2000). Effects of prime word frequency and cumulative root frequency in masked morphological priming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 421–444.Google Scholar
Giraudo, H., & Grainger, J. (2001). Priming complex words: Evidence for supralexical representation of morphology. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8 (1), 127–131.Google Scholar
Gor, K., & Cook, S. (2010). Nonnative Processing of Verbal Morphology: In Search of Regularity. Language Learning, 60 (1), 88–126.Google Scholar
Gor, K., & Jackson, S. (2013). Morphological decomposition and lexical access in a native and second language: A nesting doll effect. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28 (7), 1065–1091.Google Scholar
Heyer, V., & Clahsen, H. (2014). 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, Available on CJO 2014.Google Scholar
Institute of Language Teaching and Research. (1986). Modern Chinese frequency dictionary. Beijing: Beijing Language Institute Press.Google Scholar
Jiang, N. (1999). Testing processing explanations for the asymmetry in masked cross-language priming. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2 (1), 59–75.Google Scholar
Juhasz, B. J., Starr, M. S., Inhoff, A. W., & Placke, L. (2003). The effects of morphology on the processing of compound words: Evidence from naming, lexical decisions and eye fixations. British Journal of Psychology, 94, 223.Google Scholar
Kirkici, B., & Clahsen, H. (2013). Inflection and derivation in native and non-native language processing: Masked priming experiments on Turkish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16 (04), 776–791.Google Scholar
Ko, I. Y. (2011). Processing of compound words by adult Korean–English bilinguals. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.Google Scholar
Ko, I. Y., Wang, M., & Kim, S. (2011). Bilingual Reading of Compound Words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 40 (1), 49–73.Google Scholar
Libben, G., Gibson, M., Yoon, Y. B., & Sandra, D. (2003). Compound fracture: The role of semantic transparency and morphological headedness. Brain and Language, 84, 50–64.Google Scholar
Liu, Y., & Peng, D. (1997). Meaning access of Chinese compounds and its time course. In Chen, H. (Ed.), Cognitive Processing of Chinese and Related Asian Languages (pp. 219–232). Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press.Google Scholar
Longtin, C., Segui, J., & Hallé, P. A. (2003). Morphological priming without morphological relationship. Language and Cognitive Processes, 18 (3), 313–334.Google Scholar
Luke, S. G., & Christianson, K. (2011). Stem and whole-word frequency effects in the processing of inflected verbs in and out of a sentence context. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26 (8), 1173–1192.Google Scholar
Manelis, L., & Tharp, D. A. (1977). The processing of affixed words. Memory & Cognition, 5, 690–695.Google Scholar
Marelli, M., Crepaldi, D., & Luzzatti, C. (2009). Head position and the mental representation of nominal compounds. The Mental Lexicon, 4 (3), 430–454.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, W., Tyler, L. K., Waksler, R., & Older, L. (1994). Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon. Psychological Review, 101 (1), 3–33.Google Scholar
McDonald, J. L. (2006). Beyond the critical period: Processing-based explanations for poor grammaticality judgment performance by late second language learners. Journal of Memory and Language, 55 (3), 381–401.Google Scholar
Morris, J., Frank, T., Grainger, J., & Holcomb, P. J. (2007). Semantic transparency and masked morphological priming: An ERP investigation. Psychophysiology, 44 (4), 506–521.Google Scholar
Namei, S. (2004). Bilingual lexical development: A Persian–Swedish word association study. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14 (3), 363–388.Google Scholar
Neubauer, K., & Clahsen, H. (2009). Decomposition of inflected words in a second language: An experimental study of German participles. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 31, 403–435.Google Scholar
Peng, D., Liu, Y., & Wang, C. (1999). How is access representation organized? The relation of polymorphemic words and their morphemes in Chinese. In Wang, J., Inhoff, A. W. & Chen, H. (Eds.), Reading Chinese Script: A cognitive analysis (pp. 65–89). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1991). Rules of language. Science, 2 (253), 530–535.Google Scholar
Pollatsek, A., Hyönä, J., & Bertram, R. (2000). The role of morphological constituents in reading Finnish compound words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 26 (2), 820–833.Google Scholar
Portin, M., Lehtonen, M., Harrer, G., Wande, E., Niemi, J., & Laine, M. (2008). L1 effects on the processing of inflected nouns in L2. Acta Psychologica, 128, 452–465.Google Scholar
Portin, M., Lehtonen, M., & Laine, M. (2007). Processing of inflected nouns in late bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28 (1), 135–156.Google Scholar
Rastle, K., Davis, M. H., Marslen-Wilson, W. D., & Tyler, L. K. (2000). Morphological and semantic effects in visual word recognition: A time-course study. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15, 407–437.Google 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 & Review, 11, 1090–1098.Google Scholar
Rastle, K., & Davis, M. H. (2008). Morphological decomposition based on the analysis of orthography. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23 (7–8), 942–971.Google Scholar
Sandra, D. (1990). On the representation and processing of compound words: Automatic access to constituent morphemes does not occur. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 42A (3), 529–567.Google Scholar
Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H. (1995). Modeling morphological processing. In Feldman, L. B. (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 131–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Shoolman, N., & Andrews, S. (2003). Racehorses, reindeer, and sparrow: Using masked priming to investigate morphological influences on compound word identification. In Kinoshita, S., & Lupker, S. (Eds.), Masked Priming: The State of the Art (pp. 241–278). New York: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Silva, R., & Clahsen, H. (2008). Morphologically complex words in L1 and L2 processing: Evidence from masked priming experiments in English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 11, 245–260.Google Scholar
Smolka, E., Zwitserlood, P., & Rösler, F. (2007). Stem access in regular and irregular inflection: Evidence from German participles. Journal of Memory and Language, 57, 325–347.Google Scholar
Taft, M. (1979). Recognition of affixed words and the word frequency. Memory & Cognition, 7, 263–272.Google Scholar
Taft, M. (1994). Interactive-activation as a framework for understanding morphological processing. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9 (3), 271–294.Google Scholar
Taft, M., & Forster, K. I. (1975). Lexical storage and the retrieval of prefixed words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14 (1), 17–26.Google Scholar
Taft, M., & Forster, K. I. (1976). Lexical storage and retrieval of polymorphemic and polysyllabic words. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 15, 607–620.Google Scholar
Taft, M., & Nguyen-Hoan, M. (2010). A sticky stick? The locus of morphological representation in the lexicon. Language and Cognitive Processes, 25 (2), 277–296.Google Scholar
Vainio, S., Pajunen, A., & Hyönä, J. (2014). L1 and L2 word recognition in Finnish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 36 (01), 133–162.Google Scholar
Wang, M., Lin, C. Y., & Gao, W. (2010). Bilingual compound processing: The effects of constituent frequency and semantic transparency. Writing System Research, 2 (2), 117–137.Google Scholar
Wolter, B. (2001). Comparing the L1 and L2 Mental Lexicon: A Depth of Individual Word Knowledge Model. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 23 (1), 41–69.Google Scholar