Caitlin E. Coughlin

Morphological decomposition in native and non-native French speakers

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.

Effects of the Native Language on the Learning of Fundamental Frequency in Second-Language Speech Segmentation

This study investigates whether the learning of prosodic cues to word boundaries in speech segmentation is more difficult if the native and second/foreign languages (L1 and L2) have similar (though non-identical) prosodies than if they have markedly different prosodies (Prosodic-Learning Interference Hypothesis). It does so by comparing French, Korean, and English listeners’ use of fundamental-frequency (F0) rise as a cue to word-final boundaries in French. F0 rise signals phrase-final boundaries in French and Korean but word-initial boundaries in English. Korean-speaking and English-speaking L2 learners of French, who were matched in their French proficiency and French experience, and native French listeners completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which they recognized words whose final boundary was or was not cued by an increase in F0. The results showed that Korean listeners had greater difficulty using F0 rise as a cue to word-final boundaries in French than French and English listeners. This suggests that L1–L2 prosodic similarity can make the learning of an L2 segmentation cue difficult, in line with the proposed Prosodic-Learning Interference Hypothesis. We consider mechanisms that may underlie this difficulty and discuss the implications of our findings for understanding listeners’ phonological encoding of L2 words.

Dissociating morphological and form priming with novel complex word primes: Evidence from masked priming, overt priming, and event-related potentials

Recent research suggests that visually-presented words are initially morphologically segmented whenever the letter-string can be exhaustively assigned to existing morphological representations, but not when an exhaustive parse is unavailable; e.g., priming is observed for both hunter→HUNT and brother →BROTH, but not for brothel→BROTH. Few studies have investigated whether this pattern extends to novel complex words, and the results to date (all from novel suffixed words) are mixed. In the current study, we examine whether novel compounds (drugrack→RACK) yield morphological priming which is dissociable from that in novel pseudoembedded words (slegrack→RACK). Using masked priming, we find significant and comparable priming in reaction times for word-final elements of both novel compounds and novel pseudoembedded words. Using overt priming, however, we find greater priming effects (in both reaction times and N400 amplitudes) for novel compounds compared to novel pseudoembedded words. These results are consistent with models assuming across-the-board activation of putative constituents, while also suggesting that morpheme activation may persevere despite the lack of an exhaustive morpheme-based parse when an exhaustive monomorphemic analysis is also unavailable. These findings highlight the critical role of the lexical status of the pseudoembedded prime in dissociating morphological and orthographic priming.

Working memory capacity in L2 processing

Abstract In this paper, we review the current state of the second language (L2) processing literature and report data suggesting that this subfield should now turn its attention to working memory capacity as an important factor modulating the possibility of (near)-native-like L2 processing. We first review three major overarching accounts of L2 processing (Clahsen et al. 2006a, Grammatical processing in language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 27. 3–42; Ullman 2001, The declarative/procedural model of lexicon and grammar. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 30. 37–69; McDonald 2006, Beyond the critical period: Processing-based explanations for poor grammaticality judgment performance by late second language learners. Journal of Memory and Language 55. 381–401; Hopp 2006, Syntactic features and reanalysis in near-native processing. Second Language Research 22. 369–397, and Hopp 2010, Ultimate attainment in L2 inflection: Performance similarities between non-native and native speakers. Lingua 120. 901–931) and frame their predictions in terms of the qualitative and quantitative differences in processing expected between native speakers and L2 learners. We next review event-related potential (ERP) research on L2 processing and argue that the field’s current understanding of qualitative and quantitative differences in ERPs warrants an additional focus on variables other than L2 proficiency that can also predict individual differences in L2 processing. Recent L2 research (relying on ERPs, self-paced reading, and other online measures) suggests that the most promising such variable is working memory (WM) capacity. We summarize results from our recent L2 WM studies – and report new ERP findings – that point to the possibility of a modulatory effect of WM capacity on the nativelikeness of L2 processing. We conclude that the study of WM capacity is the logical next step for this L2 processing subfield.

Syntactic Cues Take Precedence Over Distributional Cues in Native and Non-Native Speech Segmentation

This study investigates whether syntactic cues take precedence over distributional cues in native and non-native speech segmentation by examining native and non-native speech segmentation in potential French-liaison contexts. Native French listeners and English-speaking second-language learners of French completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment. Half the stimuli contained the pivotal consonant /t/, a frequent word onset but infrequent liaison consonant, and half contained /z/, a frequent liaison consonant but rare word onset. In the adjective–noun condition (permitting liaison), participants heard a consonant-initial target (e.g., le petit tatoué; le fameux zélé) that was temporarily ambiguous at the segmental level with a vowel-initial competitor (e.g., le petit [t]athée; le fameux [z]élu); in the noun–adjective condition (not permitting liaison), they heard a consonant-initial target (e.g., le client tatoué; le Français zélé) that was not temporarily ambiguous with a vowel-initial competitor (e.g., le client [*t]athée; le Français [*z]élu). Growth-curve analyses revealed that syntactic context modulated both groups’ fixations (noun–adjective > adjective–noun), and pivotal consonant modulated both groups’ fixations (/t/ > /z/) only in the adjective–noun condition, with the effect of the consonant decreasing in more proficient French learners. These results suggest that syntactic cues override distributional cues in the segmentation of French words in potential liaison contexts.

Cue-Weighting mechanism and bilingualism

Cunnings’ proposed theory can explain why second language (L2) learners have difficulty resolving certain types of dependencies (i.e., backward-looking dependencies) but not others (i.e., forward-looking dependencies). However, his theory should be more explicit about the mechanism underlying late L2 learners’ and native speakers’ different weightings of retrieval cues, and research framed within his theory should strive to tease apart age-of-acquisition effects from bilingualism effects.

Functional load of fundamental frequency in the native language predicts learning and use of these cues in second-language speech segmentation

This study investigates whether second-language (L2) learners make greater use of prosodic cues to word boundaries if these cues have a higher functional load in the native language (L1). It examines the use of fundamental-frequency (F0) rise in the segmentation of French speech by English- and Dutch-speaking L2 learners of French matched in French proficiency and experience (and native French listeners). In both English and Dutch, an F0 rise tends to signal word-initial boundaries in pitch-accented words with initial stress, but English has more vowel reduction than Dutch, and thus full vowels also signal word-initial boundaries in English. By contrast, in French, an F0 rise tends to signal word-final boundaries. Participants completed an eye-tracking experiment: They heard sentences where the monosyllabic target ended or did not end with an F0 rise (duration being held constant), and saw four orthographic words in the display, including the target (bal “ball“) and a disyllabic competitor (balcon “balcon...

Morphological Processing of Regular Verbs in Native French Speakers

Over the past decades an extraordinary amount of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research has been carried out with the aim of understanding the nature of lexical representations and how these representations are accessed as we listen to or read words. The question that drives much of this research is whether the language processing system has access to a morpheme-based route to recognize complex words. The numerous models of lexical access that have been put forward in the literature can be categorized as taking either a morphological approach or a nonmorphological approach. Morphological models posit that the processing system can make recourse to a morpheme level of representation. The various models within the morphological approach, however, differ in hypothesizing how often the morpheme level processing route is used or made available. Whereas some morphological models claim that all complex forms are always processed through a morpheme-based route (e.g., Stockall & Marantz, 2006; Taft, 2004), others hypothesize a dichotomous system where properties such as regularity (e.g., Allen & Badecker, 2002; Clahsen, 1999), surface-form frequency (e.g., Alegre & Gordon, 1999; Baayen et al., 1997), or semantic transparency (e.g., Marslen-Wilson et al., 1994) will influence whether the morphemebased route is available to process a given word. In such dual-route processing accounts where the morpheme-based processing pathway is restricted at times, words with certain lexical properties (e.g., irregular form, high surface frequency) are believed to be accessed via a whole-form representation in lieu of a morphological representation. In contrast to morphological models, nonmorphological models propose that the morpheme as a theoretical construct should be discarded as it is not necessary to account for the ‘morphological’ relationship between words (see Hay & Baayen, 2005). Non-morphological models, such as the Parallel Distributed Processing model (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986) or Distributed Connectionist Approach (Gonnerman et al., 2007) instead posit that the lexicon constitutes an associative network where surface-forms are recognized through a combination of form (orthographic and phonological) and semantic information. In other words, non-morphological models posit that lexical access is never achieved through a morpheme-based route because it is believed that no such route or representations exist.

Delayed use of fundamental frequency (F0) rise in non-native speech segmentation

Research has shown that second/foreign language (L2) speech segmentation is less efficient than native language (L1) segmentation, because L2 learners cannot suppress L1 segmentation routines. This study uses visual-world eye-tracking to determine whether English learners of French can learn to use F0 for locating word-final boundaries in French. F0 rise is often word-initial in English but often word-final in French. Native French speakers and English learners of French heard sentences where lexical competitors were created between the target noun and the following adjective (stimulus: chat grincheux ‘cranky cat’; target: chat ‘cat’; competitor: chagrin ‘sorrow’). The target was either accented or unaccented, and the stimuli were either natural or resynthesized (swapped F0 between accented and unaccented targets). Participants selected the word they heard from given options (target, competitor, distracters), and fixations were recorded from target-word onset. Accuracy (word selection): learners, but not ...