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Morphological processing in early bilinguals: an ERP study of regular and irregular verb processing
R De Diego Balaguer1, N Sebastián-Gallés, B Díaz
1Equipe Avenir, INSERM-U421/IM3, Faculté de Médecine, Paris XII, France.
Brain Research. Cognitive Brain Research
|July 19, 2005
Summary
Language similarity impacts morphosyntax acquisition. While similar structures aid learning, dissimilar ones may interfere, especially in languages with closely related morphology. This affects second language (L2) learners differently than native speakers (L1).
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience of Language
- Second Language Acquisition
Background:
- The age of language acquisition influences second language (L2) learning.
- Language similarity also plays a critical role in L2 morphosyntax acquisition.
- Catalan and Spanish share similar regular verb suffixes but differ in irregular verb morphology.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the influence of language similarity on morphosyntactic information acquisition.
- To compare how native (L1) and second language (L2) speakers process regular and irregular verb morphology in Spanish.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a repetition-priming paradigm with Spanish regular and irregular verbs.
- Studied two groups: highly proficient early Catalan-Spanish bilinguals (L1 and L2 speakers).
- Analyzed event-related potentials (ERPs), specifically the N400 priming effect and its topography.
Main Results:
- Regular verbs elicited similar N400 priming effects in both L1 and L2 speakers.
- Irregular verb morphology showed group differences in ERP patterns and N400 topography.
- L1 speakers had an attenuated N400 effect for semi-regular verbs; L2 speakers showed reduced N400 effects for both irregular verb types.
Conclusions:
- Language similarity can facilitate the acquisition of comparable structures.
- Dissimilar structures in morphologically similar languages may cause interference for L2 learners.
- Findings suggest a complex interplay between language similarity and L2 morphosyntactic processing.
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