Processing morphologically complex words in native and non-native French

Abstract

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.