The processing of morphologically complex words en Italian L2

Serena Dal Maso (1) , Hélène Giraudo (2)

1 Department Philology, Literature, and Linguistics
2 CLLE-ERSS - Cognition, Langues, Langage, Ergonomie

The present research aims at investigating the processing of morphologically complex words in L2 Italian by means of an experimental psycholinguistic technique, i.e. a masked prime experiment associated with a lexical decision task. This work focuses, therefore, on the interface between derivational morphology and the lexicon in the specific setting of Second Language Acquisition. Specifically, we will investigate whether (and eventually to what extent) L2 Italian learners employ morphologically structured representations when processing complex words in real time or whether they have recourse to whole-word representations and directly retrieve complex words from the lexical storage. Psycholinguistic research on different languages has proved that L1 speakers are sensitive to the morphological structure of complex words during processing and that, therefore, morphology is a factor of lexical organization (as by, i.e. Rastle/ Davis/ Marslen-Wilson/ Tyler 2000, Stanners/ Neiser/ Hernon/Hall 1979, Clahsen/ Sonnenstuhl/ Blevins 2003, Rastle/ Davis/ New 2004, Frost/ Kugler/ Deutsch/Forser 2005, Boudelaa/ Marslen-Wilson 2005). According to Bybee 1995: "Words entered in the lexicon are related to other words via sets of lexical connections between identical and similar phonological and semantic features. These connections among items have the effect of yielding an internal morphological analysis of complex words" (Bybee 1995: 428).

Domaines: Psychologie

Serena Dal Maso, Hélène Giraudo. The processing of morphologically complex words en Italian L2. 1st international symposium "Morphology and its interfaces", 2013, Lille, France. ⟨hal-00986199⟩