Priming of transparent derived verbs in L2 but not L1 speakers: An fMRI study
Sophie De Grauwe1, Kristin Lemhöfer1, Roel Willems1,2, Herbert Schriefers1
1Radboud
University Nijmegen, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, The
Netherlands; 2Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
s.degrauwe@donders.ru.nl
Native (L1) speakers have been found to decompose semantically transparent derived words
(whose meaning can be deduced from the meanings of their parts, e.g. wegleggen ‘put aside’) in
many behavioral and some fMRI studies. The brain region usually implicated in morphological
decomposition is the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). In non-native (L2) speakers, the
processing of transparent derived words has hardly been investigated, especially in fMRI studies.
In an fMRI long-lag priming/lexical decision study, we investigated the processing of Dutch
semantically transparent, morphologically complex derived verbs in native (L1) and non-native
(L2) speakers. Half of the derived verbs were preceded by their stem (‘Old’), half were followed
by their stem (‘New’), with a lag of 4 to 6 words. Surprisingly, ROI analyses indicated that the
LIFG showed deactivation for Old compared to New derived verbs in L2 speakers, but not L1
speakers. Thus, in contrast with behavioral studies, our fMRI study found no priming of derived
transparent verbs by their stems in L1 speakers, whereas L2 speakers did show evidence of such
priming. As mentioned before, the LIFG has been associated with morphological decomposition.
Our finding of LIFG deactivation in L2 but not L1 speakers is consistent with the idea that L2
speakers engage more in decomposition of morphologically complex verbs than L1 speakers.
Results will be discussed in the context of the available behavioral and neuroimaging data on the
processing of morphologically complex words in L1 and L2 speakers.
Keywords: fMRI, morphology, bilingual