L2 word processing: The case of Turkish derivation

L2 word processing: The case of Turkish derivation

The question of how L2 speakers process morphologically complex words at the early stages of visual word recognition has been widely investigated in the psycholinguistic literature. However, much research has been conducted on inflected word forms, while studies on derivation remain scarce. Derived word forms provide an interesting venue to be investigated. While some derived forms are labelled as transparent (singer is someone who sings and can be decomposed), there are also derived forms that are labelled as opaque or pseudo-derived (corner is not someone who corns and cannot be decomposed) and these words were compared to form/control words (freeze has a nonmorphological relationship with free). The limited number of previous results are inconclusive. Some studies found no difference between L1 and L2 speakers (1); however, there are also studies that found significant group differences (2).

The present study compares the performance of 61 L1 Turkish speakers to 16 L2 Turkish speakers on a masked priming experiment. The L2 group was highly proficient speakers of Turkish with Russian as their L1. The stimuli consisted of 66 words in total divided into three categories: transparent (words like singer), opaque (words like corner) and form (words like freeze).

The preliminary results indicate no significant group differences in the early stages of visual word recognition processes. While both groups decomposed transparent and opaque words, the form condition was not decomposed indicating that both L1 and L2 speakers employ the morpho-orthographic decomposition and the transparency of the word does not affect the processing route.

1. Diependaele et al., (2011). Fast morphological effects in first and second language word recognition, Journal of Memory and Language, 64(4), 344-358.

2. Zhang et al., (2017). Parallel morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic activation in processing second language morphologically complex words: Evidence from Chinese-English bilinguals, International Journal of Bilingualism, 21(3), 291-305.