Morphological decomposition and lexical access in a native and second language: A nesting doll effect

Abstract

This study tests the hypothesis that second language (L2) learners move developmentally from decomposition of inflected words with less complex stem allomorphy to words with more complex stem allomorphy in lexical access. Robust auditory priming effects were observed for three types of Russian high- and low-frequency inflected verbs with graded regularity treated as complexity and productivity in stem allomorphy in native speakers (NS) of Russian. Similar effects were found in American L2 learners of Russian at three proficiency levels for high-frequency verbs. Low-frequency verbs showed an interaction of the degree of regularity with proficiency level, with priming effects present for regular verbs at all three proficiency levels, semi-regular verbs at two higher levels, and irregular verbs only at the highest level. Lemma and surface frequency effects were observed in irregular verbs only in L2 learners. Results suggest that in Russian, a highly inflected language, auditory lexical access occurs in two stages: first, decomposition into stem and inflectional affix, and second, access of the stem representation at the lemma level, which can occur directly or by further decomposing the stem into root and suffix (the nesting doll pattern). The first stage takes place automatically both in NS and L2 learners for all productive inflections, while the second is gradually acquired by late learners, from productive and less complex to unproductive and more complex stem allomorphy. This developmental tendency is in contrast to the claims that late second language learners store and access regularly inflected words undecomposed and supports the view that L2 learners beyond low proficiency levels process inflectional morphology.