Words and rules in L2 processing: An analysis of the dual-mechanism model

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Enformatik Enstitüsü, Bilişsel Bilimler Anabilim Dalı, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2005

Öğrenci: BİLAL KIRKICI

Danışman: DENİZ ZEYREK BOZŞAHİN

Özet:

The nature of the mental representation and processing of morphologically complex words has constituted one of the major points of controversy in psycholinguistic research over the past two decades. The Dual-Mechanism Model defends the necessity of two separate mechanisms for linguistic processing, an associative memory and a rule-system, which account for the processing of irregular and regular word forms, respectively. The purpose of the present study was to analyse the validity of the claims of the Dual-Mechanism Model for second language (L2) processing in order to contribute to the accumulating but so far equivocal knowledge concerning L2 processing. A second purpose of the study was to find out whether L2 proficiency could be identified as a determining factor in the processing of L2 morphology. Two experiments (a lexical decision task on the English past tense and a elicited production task on English lexical compounds) were run with 22 low-proficiency and 24 high-proficiency first language (L1) Turkish users of L2 English and with 6 L1 speakers of English. The results showed that the regular-irregular dissociation predicted by the Dual-Mechanism Model was clearly evident in the production of English lexical compounds for all three subject groups. A comparatively weaker dissociation coupled with intricate response patterns was found in the processing of the English past tense, though possibly because of a number of confounding factors that were not sufficiently controlled. In addition, direct comparisons of the L2 groups displayed a remarkable effect of L2 proficiency on L2 morphological processing.