English compound and non-compound processing in bilingual and multilingual speakers: Effects of dominance and sequential multilingualism (original) (raw)
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Bilingual compound processing: The effects of constituent frequency and semantic transparency
Two lexical decision experiments were designed to address the effects of frequency and semantic transparency of the constituent morphemes in bilingual compound processing. In Experiment 1, the frequency of the second constituent morphemes and the lexicality of the translated compounds in the non-target language were manipulated. A significant interaction in RT data between the constituent frequency and the lexicality of the non-target language was revealed: the lexicality effect of the non-target language was stronger for compounds with high-frequency second constituents compared to those with low-frequency ones. In Experiment 2, the semantic transparency of the constituents of the target language, the lexicality of the non-target language, and the second language (L2) proficiency of the participants were manipulated. A significant three-way interaction was found: for the high-proficient group, there was a lexicality effect for opaque words but not for transparent words. For the low-proficient group, no interaction was found between semantic transparency and the lexicality of the non-target language. Taken together, these findings provided evidence for compound decomposition, cross-language activation in bilingual mental lexicon, and for the mediator role of L2 proficiency.
This paper investigates the workings of the mental lexicon in bilinguals and examines how a bilingual speaker may store and compute different morphological structures of nouns. The study investigates the claim that recognising a translation from a compound to another compound should be faster and more accurate than recognising a translation from a compound to a monomorphemic word. The participants of the study were bilingual speakers of Swedish and English (N = 16) to whom a translation recognition task was administered consisting of backwards translation from their L2 (English) to their L1 (Swedish), where the English words were compound nouns and the Swedish words were either compound nouns or monomorphemic nouns. The items selected for the task consisted of 15 compound-to-compound translation equivalents, 15 compound-to-monomorphemic equivalents, and 30 filler pairs that were not translations and only indirectly contributed to the results. The positive items were all semantically transparent nouns, and the compounds all had Noun + Noun structure. All words were tested for length and frequency. The participants were presented with the task in the software DMDX and either accepted or rejected each translation pair as it was displayed. Their reaction time and error rate regarding the various translations were collected and analysed for patterns within the conditions of compound-to-compound and compound-to-monomorphemic translation. After the task, the participants were asked to fill in a frequency-based vocabulary test, self-evaluate their skills in English and complete a short questionnaire pertaining to their age of acquisition and daily use of the language. According to the findings, compound-to-compound recognition is on average quicker and results in fewer errors than recognition of an English compound to a Swedish monomorphemic word. This could mean that priming in the bilingual lexicon is restricted in terms of morphological structure; compounds activate each other cross-linguistically to a greater degree, whereas, even in proficient bilingual users, monomorphemic translation equivalents are not similarly associated. This reflects what is known as shared representations across language boundaries; a speaker expects translation equivalents to adhere to the same template, which facilitates recognition when this is the case.
Major Trends in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Volume 2
The aim of the paper is to explore the mechanisms underlying compound formation in Greek L1 and L2. The focus is on Albanian, Russian and Swedish speakers of Greek. The data of these L2 groups are cross-checked with data of native speakers in order to assess the proficiency level of learners of Greek as well as the degree to which these learners may be characterized as bilinguals. The data reveal that learners of Greek employ the same mechanisms as native speakers do in the formation of compound forms and provide high production scores, though not as high as native speakers. We further assume that typological language adjacency determines language proficiency level.
PloS one, 2018
Recent studies have suggested that proficient bilinguals show morphological decomposition in the L2, but the question remains as to whether this process is modulated by the cognateness of the morphemic constituents of L2 words and by L2 proficiency. To answer this question was the main goal of the present research. For that purpose, a masked priming lexical decision task was conducted manipulating for the first time the degree of orthographic overlap of the L2 word as a whole, as well as of their morphemic constituents (bases and suffixes). Thirty-four European Portuguese-English bilinguals (16 intermediate and 18 high-proficient) and 16 English native-speaking controls performed the task in English. Results revealed that both groups of bilinguals decomposed words as the native control group. Importantly, results also showed that morphological priming effects were sensitive not only to cross-language similarities of words as a whole, but also to their morphemic constituents (especia...
Exo-lexical variables in monolingual and bilingual morphological processing
The question of how the lexicon is organized in terms of structural units and how these units interact with each other during lexical access and subsequently during morphological processing, has been a controversial field for a long time. The morpheme versus lexeme problem is still unsolved, but several pieces of psycholinguistic evidence have come to corroborate the hypothesis according to which the locus of morphological effects is not situated exclusively inside the lexical unit but should be extended to its environment. In ...
Compound processing in second language acquisition of English
Journal of the European Second Language Association, 2017
An unresolved question in second language (L2) acquisition research is whether L2 learners differ from native speakers in their use of morphological information in accessing multimorphemic words. L2 compound studies are of particular importance for this line of research because compounds, as words which are predominantly composed of two free morphemes, enable researchers to investigate how semantic transparency, morphological headedness and frequency influence complex word processing. Studies with native speakers have revealed semantic transparency and headedness as two factors influencing constituent-based decompositional processing; whereas studies with L2 learners have so far revealed inconsistent reliance on these factors. The present study investigates this issue via a masked priming experiment testing English noun-noun compound processing by L1-Turkish-speaking learners of English (advanced and intermediate-level learners) and by native speakers of English. Findings suggest that native-like morphological decomposition is possible with increasing L2 proficiency.
The role of form in morphological priming: Evidence from bilinguals
Language and Cognitive Processes, 2013
This article explores how bilinguals perform automatic morphological decomposition processes, focusing on within-and cross-language masked morphological priming effects. In Experiment 1, unbalanced Spanish (L1) -English (L2) bilingual participants completed a lexical decision task on English targets that could be preceded by morphologically related or unrelated derived masked English and Spanish prime words.