Compound processing in second language acquisition of English

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• Compound processing
• Semantic transparency
• Morphological headedness
• L2 acquisition
• English