Morphological learning in a novel language: A cross-language comparison

Abstract

Being able to extract and interpret the internal structure of complex word forms such as the English word dance+r+s is crucial for successful language learning. We examined whether the ability to extract morphological information during word learning is affected by the morphological features of one's native tongue. Spanish and Finnish adult participants performed a word–picture associative learning task in an artificial language where the target words included a suffix marking the gender of the corresponding animate object. The short exposure phase was followed by a word recognition task and a generalization task for the suffix. The participants' native tongues vary greatly in terms of morphological structure, leading to two opposing hypotheses. On the one hand, Spanish speakers may be more effective in identifying gender in a novel language because this feature is present in Spanish but not in Finnish. On the other hand, Finnish speakers may have an advantage as the abundance of bound morphemes in their language calls for continuous morphological decomposition. The results support the latter alternative, suggesting that lifelong experience on morphological decomposition provides an advantage in novel morphological learning.

Keywords:

• Morphology
• Word learning
• Second language acquisition
• Cross-language differences

Notes

¹Note that by-item analyses were not performed as the stimulus sets were not identical for the two groups.

Additional information

Funding

M.L. was financially supported by the Academy of Finland [project number 260276]. This project has also been supported by the Catalan Government [grant number 2009SGR93]; and the Spanish Government (MICINN) [grant number PSI2011-29219] awarded to A.R.-F.