Introduction to this special issue: Reading morphologically complex words in a second language

In this age of globalisation, the need for communication in a second or foreign language has dramatically increased. Second language (L2) reading and literacy education has become one of the most important components of our educational system. Learning to read is essentially learning to map between phonological, orthographic and semantic information in written words. The key development in learning to read is the improvement of the qualities of orthographic, phonological and semantic representations of given words, and learning to read in L2 is no exception. This Special Issue is focused on one important specific aspect of L2 reading, namely, reading morphologically complex L2 words. Morphology represents an important interface between phonology, orthography and semantics. Previous L2 reading research has been largely devoted to phonological processes in reading single-morpheme words. Relatively fewer studies have investigated reading of morphologically complex words in L2.

How morphologically complex words are represented and processed has been one of the central questions in first language (L1) reading literature. Recent research has shown support for interactive models that propose a direct lexical route involving access to full-form representations of the complex words along with a parsing route that allows decomposition of constituent morphemes. According to those interactive models, the mental lexicon is the storehouse for both complex words and their constituent morphemes. The meaning of a complex word can be accessed either directly or by an analysis of the meanings of its constituent morphemes. The analysis approach is affected by the features of an individual complex word and its constituent morphemes, such as frequency of both the whole word and its constituent morphemes and semantic transparency in terms of the relation between the whole word and its constituent morphemes. Individual differences in reading skill have recently been shown to play a role in the reliance of morpho-orthographic information in reading. Research to date has focused heavily on reading morphologically complex words in monolingual populations, while less is known about reading complex words by L2 readers, both in developing children and adults. Within the very limited literature on L2 reading of morphologically complex words, there is some debate on whether L2 learners are able to represent and process morphological information as much as L1 readers.

The general purpose of this Special Issue is to bring together empirical research that addresses the role of morphological information in L2 reading. The five papers selected represent the current thinking and cutting-edge research by both leading scholars and emerging researchers in the field. Collectively, these papers examined reading morphologically complex words in different L2 orthographies including English, French, Dutch and Chinese. These papers focused on two major types of morphological structures, compound and derived words. L2 children across primary grades and L2 adults were involved in the studies. Different experimental paradigms were employed including lexical decision, translation identification, priming, semantic category judgement and inference. The specific questions addressed in these papers are: Are L2 children sensitive to frequency information concerning the whole word and constituent morphemes as much as L1 children, and how do they develop such morphological sensitivity across primary grades? Do L2 readers with different L2 proficiency levels differ in their sensitivity to embedded stem words and suffixes in lexical processing of complex words? How do L2 readers activate morphological information in their L1 to facilitate their reading of L2 complex words, and does cognate status between L1 and L2 base morphemes help children to deconstruct morphologically complex words in L2? How does functional salience of semantic radicals, a unique morphemic unit in Chinese, influence L2 learners’ meaning processing in compound characters?

In the first paper, Hipfner-Boucher, Lam, Chen, and Deacon (2015) studied the effects of two word properties on children’s ability to decompose multimorphemic words in French as a new language: English-French cognate and base morpheme frequency. Two groups of French language learners at about seven years of age were recruited from a French immersion programme in a Canadian region where English is the predominant language spoken. One group of children had English as L1 and the other had English as L2. In a morphologically complex cognate task, children were asked to select a correct English translation for a French derived words. Within the items, three word types were selected: high-frequency cognates, low-frequency cognates and low-frequency non-cognates. Results in their Study 1 showed that children benefited from the high-frequency base morphemes in accessing morphemic constituents of derived words. However, the non-significant result for the comparison between low-frequency base morphemes and non-cognate words suggests that children did not rely on the cognate base words in processing morphologically complex words. No difference was found between children with different language backgrounds. In Study 2, the researchers added pseudo-root word items to better address the effect of cognates and, furthermore, children were followed from grade 2 to grade 3. Their results suggest that there is a clear developmental trend in children’s knowledge of cognates between the two languages (French and English) and their reliance on cognates in accessing morphemic units in complex words, regardless of their language backgrounds.

In the second paper, de Zeeuw, Schreuduer, and Verhoeven (2015) investigated processing compound words in both L1 and L2 readers across primary grades. Dutch L1 and Turkish-Dutch bilingual children from grades 2, 4 and 6 were recruited. A lexical decision task was designed and the critical manipulation was the frequency of the first, second constituent morpheme and the whole word. Overall, there was a clear developmental trajectory that with the increasing grades, children were getting more and more accurate in making lexical judgement. Both L1 and L2 children showed sensitivity to the frequency manipulation of both whole word and constituent morphemes. Their results suggest that even young readers in primary school years utilise all morphological information available in reading complex words regardless of their L2 status. This provides an important converging evidence about the access to morphological cues in reading complex words that is found mostly in adults in the literature. Furthermore, Zeeuw et al. showed that L2 learners were less efficient than L1 learners in processing this information given their relatively limited target language experience, and this difference was smaller in fourth grade than in second grade, likely due to the increasing target language experience for children in fourth grade.

In the subsequent paper, Severine, Commissaire, and Duncan (2015) studied L2 readers’ sensitivity to morphemic units in complex words. Two groups of native French speakers in France with English as L2 were recruited: low-proficiency versus high-proficiency L2 readers. A lexical decision task was designed and the critical manipulation was the presence of an embedded word (W) and suffix (S). A full factorial design yielded four experimental conditions (W+S+, W+S−, W−S+ and W–S–). Both real and pseudowords were used. This simple lexical decision task allows the researchers to tap into L2 readers’ sensitivity to the morphological structures including both base words and suffixes. The key finding from this study was that both low- and high-proficiency L2 readers are sensitive to the morphemic units in pseudowords and this suggests that regardless of L2 proficiency, L2 readers are able to rely on morphemic units in visual word identification.

In the following paper, Ko and Wang (2015) conducted two experiments to examine the within-language (Experiment 1) and cross-language (Experiment 2) activation of morphemic units in compound words. A clear strength about this study is that it addressed the time course in cross-language activation at the morphemic level in L2 reading. Their results from Experiment 1 supported morphological decomposition in Korean orthography, a non-Indo-European orthography that has a unique visual-orthographic configuration compared to the Indo-European orthographies. A written Korean word has a clear visual syllable boundary, thus the findings from Korean orthography add novel evidence for the contribution of morphological information that is independent of the visual form of the orthography. The most interesting finding in their study (Experiment 2) is that when reading English L2 compound words, L1 morphological information was activated at a very early stage (at 36 ms and 48 ms prime durations) in combination with L1 phonological information, and this early automatic cross-language activation was independent of semantic information. Semantic information exerted constraints on morphological activation at a relatively later stage (at 48 ms and 100 ms prime durations).

In the final paper, Chan, Koda, Zhang, and Zhang (2015) examined how features of semantic radicals influence character meaning processing among learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The semantic radicals in Chinese characters function similarly to morphemic constituents within compound characters. Therefore, studying how CFL learners represent and process semantic radicals in Chinese provides a unique testing case for the role of morphological information in reading L2 complex words. Lu et al. first conducted functional property analysis and coded radical functional salience in terms of functional diversity, functional dominance, functional coherence and functional ambiguity (Study 1). Type frequency and lexicality of the radicals were also taken into account. Native Chinese speakers were tested for their perceived familiarity with the commonly used radicals and their relation to functional properties. Results showed that functional diversity, functional ambiguity and type frequency were significantly related to perceived radical familiarity, suggesting that functional saliency is a good indicator of the function of the sub-lexical morphemic information in compound character learning. In Study 2, Lu et al. went a step further to test the role of radical functional salience in processing radical information by CFL learners. Semantic category judgement, lexical inference and radical knowledge tasks were administered. Results suggested that radical salience exerted a strong influence on semantic category judgement. Participants performed better on category judgement for items with high-salience radicals compared to low-salience counterparts. Character knowledge clearly contributed to students’ utilisation of radical information in lexical processing; only those students with high radical knowledge could benefit from the high radical salience.

Taken together, the papers in this Special Issue provided strong evidence that both young and adult L2 readers are sensitive to morphemic information as a useful cue for reading complex words. This was true for L2 children as young as age seven. This was also true for both low-proficiency and high-proficiency adult L2 readers. L2 adult learners not only attend to the morphological information in the target L2 but also are able to activate their L1 translated, and this process occurs quickly and automatically. In addition to frequency information, L2 learners also attend to more fine-gained functional properties such as sematic diversity and ambiguity in reading complex characters that contain semantic radicals, a unique morphemic unit in the Chinese writing system. Finally, there is a clear developmental trend that children improve their sensitivity to morphemic information over time. Adult L2 learners with better vocabulary knowledge are better able to utilise morphemic information to aid their lexical processing.

In closing, we would like to express our sincere appreciation to all the reviewers and to the authors who worked so hard on multiple rounds of revisions. We hope that our Special Issue will serve as a catalyst for future research on this important topic. We look forward to seeing more collections of research on morphology and reading in L2 in the future.