Cognitive Architectures in Morphological Processing: Acquisition and Attrition

In the current project I used an interdisciplinary experimental approach to investigate morphological processing in French. At issue were (1) the priorities of the language processor upon initial visual exposure to morphologically complex words: is it most sensitive to morphemic structure, or orthographic form? (2) Whether lexical processing in L1 is different from that in L2, and in L2 attrition?;This same design was used in Experiment 2 with some additions: (1) more items per experimental condition; (2) an orthographic condition ( donnecte-DONNER); and (3) a late L2 group. The latter had learned French after age 11 and used it frequently. Priming was found in the identity and the morphologically related conditions but not in the orthographic condition. As in Experiment 1, the various groups did not differ statistically with respect to priming effects, supporting arguments for similar rather than different processing patterns as a function of language experience.;In Experiment 3 participants performed gender decisions on targets (e.g., CHEMISEfem) primed by a derivative of the same (e.g., chemisettefem), or the opposite gender (i.e., chemisiermasc) in the morphological condition. In the unrelated condition, unrelated primes of the same (tassefem) or different gender (gâteaumasc) were used. Priming was found in the morphological conditions but there were no gender congruency effects. Morphological relatedness conveyed through a suffix, thus, seems to have an impact on lexical access, in support of evidence from Experiment 1 and 2 that morphemic structure impacts lexcical processing in native and non-native processing.;To address these questions, three experiments were run. In Experiment 1, native, early L2, and early L2 speakers with attrition performed lexical decisions on targets (CROIRE) preceded by (1) identity ( croire), (2) morphologically-related, inflectional (croyais ), or derivational (doucement- DOUCE), and (3) unrelated primes (ecrire). Priming occurred in the identity and the derivationally-related conditions, which was consistent with morpheme-based accounts of word representation and processing. No significant differences were found between language groups supporting the view that (1) early L2 speakers process morphologically complex words in a native-like fashion, and (2) lexical processing in attrition is not necessarily different from that in acquisition.