Morphosyntactic underspecification affects the processing of verbal forms at different levels of abstraction in L1 and L2 German

• Andreas Opitz ^[1] ; Denisa Bordag ^[2] ; Alberto Furgoni ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Leipzig

     University of Leipzig

     Kreisfreie Stadt Leipzig, Alemania

     
  2. [2] University of Haifa

     University of Haifa

     Israel

     
• Localización: Bilingualism: Language and cognition, ISSN 1366-7289, Vol. 28, Nº 1, 2025, págs. 185-197
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.1017/S1366728924000282
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Using a priming paradigm, we investigated the processing of overtly identical verb forms with different sets of morphosyntactic features in L1 and L2 German. We found that more specific functions of a verb (inflected verbs) were better primes for less specific verb functions (past participles) than vice versa. For L1 speakers, these priming asymmetries were observed regardless of whether the lexical verb was repeated in prime and target or not (i.e., priming also for abstract configurations). For L2 learners, a similar but not native-like asymmetric priming pattern was seen only with repetition of the lexical verb. It was absent when the verb was not repeated. We conclude that in L2, morphosyntactic information is processed more on a lexical, item-based level compared to L1. We discuss our results in the context of several accounts, e.g., Shallow Structure Hypothesis, Declarative Procedural Model and the Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation.

• Referencias bibliográficas
  • Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal....
  • Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software,...
  • Bates, E., Devescovi, A., Hernandez, A., & Pizzamiglio, L. (1996). Gender priming in Italian. Perception & Psycholinguistics, 58(7),...
  • Blom, E., Polisšenská, D., & Weerman, F. (2006). Effects of age on the acquisition of agreement inflection. Morphology, 16(2), 313–336....
  • Booij, G. (2010). Construction Morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
  • Bordag, D., Gor, K., & Opitz, A. (2021). Ontogenesis Model of the L2 Lexical Representation. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 25(2),...
  • Bordag, D., & Opitz, A. (2021). Representation and processing of overtly identical complex forms in L1 and L2: The case of conversion...
  • Bordag, D., & Opitz, A. (2022). Employing General Linguistic Knowledge in Incidental Acquisition of Grammatical Properties of New L1 and...
  • Bordag, D., Opitz, A., & Pechmann, T. (2006). Gender processing in first and second languages: The role of noun termination. Journal of...
  • Bosch, S., & Clahsen, H. (2016). Accessing morphosyntax in L1 and L2 word recognition: A priming study of inflected German adjectives....
  • Bosch, S., Krause, H., & Leminen, A. (2017). The time-course of morphosyntactic and semantic priming in late bilinguals: A study of German...
  • Bosch, S., Veríssimo, J., & Clahsen, H. (2019). Inflectional morphology in bilingual language processing: An age-of-acquisition study....
  • Caramazza, A. (1997). How many levels of processing are there in lexical access? Cogn. Neuropsychol. 14, 177–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/026432997381664CrossRefGoogle...
  • Chamoreau, C., & Estrada-Fernández, Z. (Eds.). (2016). Finiteness and nominalization. John Benjamins Publishing.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  • Clahsen, H., Eisenbeiss, S., Hadler, M., & Sonnenstuhl, I. (2001). The mental representation of inflected words: An experimental study...
  • Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2006). Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27(1), 3–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716406060024CrossRefGoogle...
  • Clahsen, H., & Felser, C. (2018). Some notes on the Shallow Structure Hypothesis. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(3), 693–706....
  • Clahsen, H., Felser, C., Neubauer, K., Sato, M., & Silva, R. (2010). Morphological structure in native and nonnative language processing....
  • Clahsen, H., Prüfert, P., Eisenbeiss, S., & Cholin, J. (2002). Strong stems in the German mental lexicon: Evidence from child language...
  • Cook, S. V., & Gor, K. (2015). Lexical access in L2: Representational deficit or processing constraint? The Mental Lexicon, 10(2), 247–270....
  • Coughlin, C. E., Fiorentino, R., Royle, P., & Steinhauer, K. (2019). Sensitivity to Inflectional Morphology in a Non-native Language:...
  • Coughlin, C. E., & Tremblay, A. (2015). Morphological decomposition in native and non-native French speakers. Bilingalism: Language and...
  • Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological Review, 93(3), 283–321. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0023-8333.2005.00294.x3CrossRefGoogle...
  • Feldman, L. B., Kostić, A., Basnight-Brown, D. M., Durđević, D. F., & Pastizzo, M. J. (2010). Morphological facilitation for regular and...
  • Foote, R. (2017). The storage and processing of morphologically complex words in L2 Spanish. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 39(4),...
  • Giraudo, H., & Dal Maso, S. (2016). The Salience of Complex Words and Their Parts: Which Comes First?. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1778....
  • Gor, K., & Cook, S. V. (2020). A mare in a pub? Nonnative facilitation in phonological priming. Second Language Research, 36(1), 123–140....
  • Gor, K., Cook, S. V., Bordag, D., Chrabaszcz, A., & Opitz, A. (2021). Fuzzy Lexical Representations in Adult Second Language Speakers....
  • Günther, F., Smolka, E., & Marelli, M. (2019). ‘Understanding’ differs between English and German: Capturing systematic language differences...
  • Jackendoff, R., & Audring, J. (2020). Relational morphology: A cousin of construction grammar. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 2241. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02241CrossRefGoogle...
  • Jacob, G., Fleischhauer, E., & Clahsen, H. (2013). Allomorphy and affixation in morphological processing: A cross-modal priming study...
  • Jacob, G., Heyer, V., & Veríssimo, J. (2018). Aiming at the same target: A masked priming study directly comparing derivation and inflection...
  • Kirkici, B., & Clahsen, H. (2013). Inflection and derivation in native and non-native language processing: Masked priming experiments...
  • Krause, H., Bosch, S., & Clahsen, H. (2015). Morphosyntax in the bilingual mental lexicon: An experimental study of strong stems in German....
  • Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, P. B., & Christensen, R. H. (2017). lmerTest Package: Tests in Linear Mixed Effects Models. Journal of Statistical...
  • Leminen, A., & Clahsen, H. (2014). Brain potentials to inflected adjectives: Beyond storage and decomposition. Brain Research, 1543, 223–234....
  • Lenth, R. V. (2022). Emmeans: Estimated Marginal Means, aka Least-Squares Means. R package version: 1.7.2. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeansGoogle...
  • Levelt, W. J., Roelofs, A., & Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and brain sciences, 22(1),...
  • Milin, P., Smolka, E., & Feldman, L. B. (2017). Models of lexical access and morphological processing. In Fernández, E. M. & Cairns,...
  • Neubauer, K., & Clahsen, H. (2009). Decomposition of inflected words in a second language: An experimental study of German participles....
  • Nicklin, C., & Plonsky, L. (2020). Outliers in L2 research in applied linguistics: A synthesis and data re-analysis. Annual Review of...
  • Opitz, A., Bordag, D., & Furgoni, A. (2022). Mental Representation of Word Family Structure: The Case of German Infinitives, Conversion...
  • Opitz, A., Regel, S., Müller, G., & Friederici, A. D. (2013). Neurophysiological evidence for morphological underspecification in German...
  • Pinker, S. (2009). Language learnability and language development: With new commentary by the author. Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle...
  • R Core Team (2021). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Version 4.1.2. R Foundation for Statistical Computing.Google...
  • Audring, J. (2019). Mothers or sisters? The encoding of morphological knowledge. Word Structure, 12(3), 274–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  • Regel, S., Opitz, A., Müller, G., & Friederici, A. D. (2015). The past tense debate revisited: Electrophysiological evidence for subregularities...
  • Riordan, B., Dye, M., & Jones, M. N. (2015). Grammatical number processing and anticipatory eye-movements are not tightly coordinated...
  • Roelofs, A., Meyer, A. S., & Levelt, W. J. M. (1998). A case for the lemma/lexeme distinction in models of speaking: Comment on Caramazza...
  • Schneider, W., Eschman, A., & Zuccolotto, A. (2002). E-prime (version 2.0). Psychology Software Tools Inc. https://pstnet.com/products/e-primeGoogle...
  • Schriefers, H. (1993). Syntactic processes in the production of noun phrases. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,...
  • Schriefers, H., Friederici, A. D., & Graetz, P. (1992). Inflectional and derivational morphology in the mental lexicon: Symmetries and...
  • Silva, R., & Clahsen, H. (2008). Morphologically Complex Words in L1 and L2 Processing: Evidence from Masked Priming Experiments in English....
  • Smolka, E., & Ravid, D. (2019). What is a verb? Linguistic, psycholinguistic and developmental perspectives on verbs in Germanic and Semitic...
  • Ullman, M. T. (2004). Contributions of memory circuits to language: The declarative/procedural model. Cognition, 92(1-2), 231–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2003.10.008CrossRefGoogle...
  • Ullman, M. T. (2005). A cognitive neuroscience perspective on second language acquisition: The declarative/procedural model. In Sanz, C. (Ed.),...
  • Ullman, M. T. (2020). The declarative/procedural model: A neurobiologically motivated theory of first and second language 1. In Theories in...
  • van Casteren, M., & Davis, M. H. (2006). Mix, a program for pseudorandomization. Behavior Research Methods, 38(4), 584–589. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03193889CrossRefGoogle...
  • Veríssimo, J., Heyer, V., Jacob, G., & Clahsen, H. (2018). Selective effects of age of acquisition on morphological priming: Evidence...