Processing of regular and irregular past tense morphology in highly proficient second language learners of English: a self-paced reading study

Dual-system models suggest that English past tense morphology involves two processing routes: rule application for regular verbs and memory retrieval for irregular verbs (Pinker, 1999). In second language (L2) processing research, Ullman (2001a) suggested that both verb types are retrieved from memory, but more recently Clahsen and Felser (2006) and Ullman (2004) argued that past tense rule application can be automatised with experience by L2 learners. To address this controversy, we tested highly proficient Greek-English learners with naturalistic or classroom L2 exposure compared to native English speakers in a self-paced reading task involving past tense forms embedded in plausible sentences. Our results suggest that, irrespective to the type of exposure, proficient L2 learners of extended L2 exposure apply rule-based processing

Neural correlates of emotion word processing: the complex relation between emotional valence and arousal

Poster Session 1: no. 2The Conference's website is located at http://events.unitn.it/en/psb2010Emotion is characterised by a two-dimensional structure: valence describes the extent to which an emotion is positive or negative, whereas arousal refers to the intensity of an emotion, how exciting or calming it is. Emotional content of verbal material influences cognitive processing during lexical decision, naming, emotional Stroop task and many others. Converging findings showed that emotionally valenced words (positive or negative) are processed faster than neutral words, as shown by reaction time and ERP measures, suggesting a prioritisation of emotional …published_or_final_versio

The Roles of Thematic Knowledge in Sentence Comprehension

People possess a great deal of knowledge concerning what commonly happens in various types of events. This knowledge, specifically with respect to event participants and their relations within an event (thematic knowledge), is an important component of how people understand language. A number of studies have shown a rapid influence of thematic knowledge during moment-to-moment sentence processing, in both investigations of lexical processing in sentential contexts, and temporary syntactic ambiguity resolution. The main goal of this dissertation is to further our understanding about the roles of thematic knowledge during sentence processing and sentence understanding by examining two critical unresolved issues. Chapter 2 investigated whether manipulation of thematic knowledge can lead to processing disruption in sentences that are otherwise assumed to be free of processing difficulty. That is, I investigated whether simple sentences can be made more difficult. This issue is particularly important for adjudicating among two major theories of sentence comprehension, two-stage and constraint-based theories. I found that main clause sentences could be made more difficult by manipulating thematic fit of the initial noun phrase, as in The host invited versus The guest invited. Because the influence of thematic fit was found at the earliest point at which it could be expected, the results strongly support constraint-based models. Chapter 3 investigated how thematic knowledge affects the construction of sentential meaning representations, and how misinterpretations can occur during that process. Specifically, the study evaluated several possibilities regarding how misanalyses of thematic roles might occur in full passive sentences that varied in plausibility. Participants’ understanding was determined by asking them to recall the agent or patient of each target sentence. The novel aspects of this study involved in-depth analyses of the types of errors that participants make, and using ERPs to investigate on-line processing differences. A major result was that the N400 ERP component was smaller for trials on which participants made an error versus when they responded correctly, indicating that errors occurred when readers were not sensitive to thematic implausibility. In summary, the studies reported in this dissertation provide novel and important theoretical insights into thematic role processing during sentence comprehension

Acquisition of French adjectives in Quebec French as revealed by elicitation data

This study presents data from an elicitation study on French size and color adjectives in noun phrases (DPs), both early acquired structures. Thirty-two francophone children aged 3–5 years participated in the study. Adjectives were elicited using specially designed puzzles and spontaneous speech corpora. We observed that errors in French variable adjectives are produced in the early acquisition stages, especially in the context of feminine colour DPs. We propose that the source of difficulty for feminine variable adjectives is the retrieval of a lexicalized form that competes with the masculine adjective denoting the same concept

The dual-route account of German - Where it's not a schema theory it's probably wrong [Open peer commentary on Clahsen, H. Rules of language] [Letter]

Clahsen's experimental data from generalization, frequency, and priming fail to support and even conflict with those aspects of his dual-route account that distinguish it from schema theories

Constraints on Language Learning : behavioral and neurocognitive studies with adults and children

This thesis will contribute to a body of experimental work addressing the question of whether language learning plays a role in certain fundamental design properties of natural languages. Methodologically, this thesis seeks to extend the artificial language learning paradigm, investigating whether learners are sensitive to the constraints embodied by key properties of languages. For example, we will explore whether communicative pressure influences the final outcome of language learning, namely how the structures that are acquired by individuals are transmitted to downstream generations. We will also explore how basic language learning constraints operate in different age groups and, importantly, cross-linguistically. Next to the behavioral experiments focusing on learning and its outcomes, we will look at preliminary electrophysiological correlates of basic compositional processing in the early stages of learning a miniature artificial language using electroencephalography (EEG). In this general introduction I will briefly discuss some of the relevant concepts and methods which will be used in three studies that constitute this thesis

Processing morphologically complex words in native and non-native French

This dissertation investigates how individuals who learned French after childhood process inflected French verbs. Two experiments test the hypothesis that non-native speakers lack the grammatical representation responsible for processing inflection in the manner that native speakers are able to. Experiment 1 uses a masked priming lexical decision task to test if native and non-native French speakers are able to decompose inflected words into stem and affix, and access a morphological level of representation in the lexicon. Experiment 2 uses the same task as Experiment 1, but incorporates electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the time-course of lexical access in native and non-native French speakers. The results of both Experiment 1 and 2 indicate that non-native French speakers process inflectional information in a qualitatively similar way as native speakers. Additionally, the ability to process inflection in a native-like way is not restricted to learners at higher levels of proficiency; morphological processing is found across a wide range of proficiency levels. The results of the two experiments suggest that the grammatical representations and brain mechanisms responsible for processing inflection are available to adult second language learners, and may be available even in the early stages of acquisition

Grapho-morphological awareness in Spanish L2 reading

This paper contributes to the literature on the transferability of grapho-morphological awareness (GMA) for L2 learners by analyzing L2 learners' morphology knowledge at the word and text level. GMA helps readers to identify grammatical categories, infer meanings of unfamiliar words, and access stored lexical information (Koda, 2008). Previous research indicates that L2 GMA is influenced by L1 GMA (Fender 2003; Hancin-Bhatt & Nagy, 1994; Koda, 2000; Ramirez, et. al., 2010; Schiff & Calif, 2007).In this paper, native speakers of Spanish (n=30) and native speakers of English learning Spanish as an L2 (n=46) completed four tasks: two timed lexical decision tasks (LDT) in English (only English speakers) and Spanish; three short passages followed by multiple choice questions; a cloze task; and an interview to discuss their answers. L2 learners show a native-like word recognition pattern (Clahsen & Felser, 2006a, 2006b), providing evidence for a language-specific morphological processing. L2 learners could recognize and decompose words into morphemes and lexemes through the different tasks, which implies that they neither ignore morphology nor follow a whole-word reading approach. However, this ability did not always help them to access the right word meaning. Also, orthographically similar words from L1 and L2 interfere with word recognition of inflected and derived words. Despite showing interference in inflected words during the timed LDT, they show a greater control during the interviews. However, derivational morphology is more difficult for L2 learners since they do not know derivational constraints either implicitly or explicitly. The results suggest that intermediate L2 learners with an alphabetic writing system in their L1 can go beyond transfer in an alphabetic L2, and that the relationship between proficiency and GMA might be reciprocal (Kuo & Anderson, 2008)