Processing English compounds in the first and second laguage ,the influence of the middle morpheme

Language Learning

ISSN 0023-8333

Processing English Compounds in the First and Second Language: The Influence of the Middle Morpheme Victoria A. Murphy University of Oxford

Jennifer Hayes University of Hertfordshire

Native English speakers tend to exclude regular plural inflection when producing English noun-noun compounds (e.g., rat-eater not rats-eater) while allowing irregular plural inflection within compounds (e.g., mice-eater) (Clahsen, 1995; Gordon, 1985; Hayes, Smith & Murphy, 2005; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000). Exposure to the input alone has been considered insufficient to explain this dissociation between regular and irregular plurals in compounds because naturally occurring compounds in English rarely have plurals of any type included within them (e.g., Gordon, 1985). However, the constraint on the production of plural inflection in English compounds could be derived from the patterns in which regular plural and possessive morphemes occur in the input. To explore this idea, native adult English speakers and adult Chinese learners of English were asked to process a series of compounds containing different medial morphemes and phonemes. Comparisons were made across compounds with regular and irregular plurals and possessive [-s]. Native speakers (NS) of English processed compounds with medial possessive morphology faster than compounds with medial regular plural morphology.

The second language learners did not show the same pattern as the NSs, which could be due to the fact that they had considerably less exposure to the relevant input patterns relative to the NSs. Regular plurals may be excluded before a rightmost noun in English because the pattern “Noun–[-s] morpheme–Noun” is more frequently used for marking possession in English. Irregular plurals do not end in the [-s] morpheme and therefore

The authors of this article are grateful to the participants for their time and energy, as well as to Meyric Rawlings for technical assistance. We would also like to thank the reviewers of this article and, particularly, Kira Gor, for putting this issue together and for her patient editorial skills, which had a significant positive impact on the final version of this article.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Victoria A. Murphy, Department of Education, University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford OX2 6PY UK. Internet: victoria.murphy@education.ox.ac.uk

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C 2010 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan

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do not “compete” with the possessive marker and, consequently, may be optionally included in compounds. It is possible, therefore, that the input English learners receive could indeed be sufficient to constrain this aspect of English compound production.

Keywords compounding; inflectional morphology; possessive morphology

A compound is made up of two or more words concatenated to form another word (e.g., pan and cake → pancake). Compounds usually consist of a “head” word and a modifier. The head word in English compounds is usually the rightmost word of the compound and tends to designate the particular entity identified by the compound. The modifier word precedes the head and qualifies the sense denoted by the head. For example, in the compound pancake, the head word is cake and the modifier word is pan. Compounds can also have a head-complement relationship (e.g., taxi driver, dish washer) and these types of compounds are referred to as synthetic compounds. When asked to produce synthetic compounds made up of two nouns in which the first nonhead noun is plural, English-speaking children (Gordon, 1985; Nicoladis, 2003; Oetting & Rice, 1993; van der Lely & Christian, 2000), native German-speaking children (Clahsen, Marcus, & Bartke, 1993), native English-speaking teenagers (van der Lely & Christian, 2000), and native English-speaking adults (Lardiere & Schwartz, 1997; Murphy, 2000) more often include irregular than regular plurals in compounds. Thus, in the literature, it has become generally accepted that regular plurals are omitted but irregular plurals “easily appear inside compounds” (Marcus, Brinkmann, Clahsen, Weise, & Pinker, 1995, p. 208).

Gordon (1985) was among the first studies to empirically demonstrate that native English speakers (in this case, children) exclude regular plurals in producing compounds but include irregulars. What was particularly noteworthy concerning this finding was that neither regular nor irregular plural inflection tends to appear within naturally occurring English compounds. The English-speaking children tested in Gordon’s study produced irregular plurals in compounds even though these compounds are rare in natural child-directed speech (i.e., children are likely to hear “toothbrush” not “teeth brush” and “mouse-trap” not “mice-trap”). Thus, Gordon (1985) argued that if compounds with plurals (of either type) do not occur frequently enough in the input to signal when and what type of plurals are licensed internal to compounds, then an innate morphological constraint must mediate this aspect of compound production. In other words, he argued that the input alone is insufficient to explain the observed dissociation between regular and irregular plural inflection in the production of English compounds.

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This suggestion is similar to Pinker’s (1999) explanation for the dissociation between regular and irregular plurals in compounds, namely that irregular plurals are represented and processed differently from regulars (Pinker, 1991, 1999; Pinker & Prince, 1988). Pinker and Prince’s dual-mechanism model proposed dissociated systems in which the processing of regular morphology is mediated by classic symbolic rules of grammar (e.g., rat + [-s] = rats).

Conversely, irregulars are stored as memorized pairs of words (mouse-mice) in the mental lexicon. In terms of how the dual-mechanism model might impact upon compounding, Marcus et al. (1995) argued that as compounds are the product of joining together two stems from the mental lexicon to form one word, irregular plurals may be used in compounds because they are stored, already inflected, as lexical items. However, regular forms are not included in compounds because they are products of rule application that takes place outside the lexicon, “online,” and at a later stage than compounding in the word formation process.

As cited earlier, many studies in the L1 literature have reported a dissociation between regular and irregular plurals in compound production where participants exclude regular plural forms within compounds (rat-eater) while including irregulars (mice-eater). Similarly, a number of studies have shown the same pattern in the second language (L2) literature testing adults on compound production tasks (e.g., Clahsen, 1995; Garc´ıa Mayo, 2006; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000). This consistent demarcation between regular and irregular plurals in compound production across both first language (L1) and L2 studies does certainly suggest that something about these two forms lends them to be processed differently in compound production. However, the dual-mechanism account of this difference has a number of problems associated with it with respect to how well it accounts for the interaction between plural inflectional morphology and compound production in English (e.g., see Murphy, 2000, 2004, for a discussion). One obvious problem is that there are in fact a few persistent examples of regular plurals appearing within compounds (despite the fact that such forms are meant to be prohibited by the dual-mechanism model).

Haskell, MacDonald, and Seidenberg (2003) found in their corpus analysis that in 6% of occasions in which regular plurals appeared, they were followed by a second noun. Although not a high proportion, these 6% illustrate that such forms do appear, despite their prohibition laid down by the dual-mechanism model. Pinker (1999, p. 181) also listed 25 examples, such as singles bar and publications catalogue, in which regular plurals occur inside compounds. Furthermore, regular plurals do occur internal to compounds in languages other than English, such as Dutch (Schreuder, Neijt, van der Weide, & Baayen, 1998) Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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and Spanish (Lardiere, 1995). Languages do vary, however, with respect to compound formation and whether plurals are licensed within them. Garc´ıa Mayo (2006) noted that Spanish compounds retain the canonical Verb-Object (VO) order in deverbal compounds (e.g., lavaplatos, where lava is the verb [to wash] and platos is the object [dishes]). Basque, on the other hand, is more like English in that compounds in Basque are head-final and do not allow internal inflection (Garc´ıa Mayo, 2006). Thus, there is variability across languages with respect to both how compounds are formed and whether internal inflection is licensed. The dual-mechanism model bars any regular inflectional morphology internal to compounds. However, in English, and indeed in other languages, it is easy to find examples that violate this prohibition. The possessive [-s] morpheme, for example, is a relatively common “regular” inflectional morpheme that appears within compounds (e.g., Adam’s apple). An analysis of child-directed speech in the CHILDES database indicated that when either the phoneme /s/ or /z/ (which can also function as allomorphs of the regular plural morpheme) appears in a noun-noun sequence, it is almost always a possessive [-s] morpheme (Hayes, 2003). Therefore, the dual-mechanism model is an unsatisfactory explanation of the relationship between regular/irregular plurals and compounding in English, both in the L1 and the L2.

One alternative explanation explored in this article is whether the input does indeed consist of sufficient information to lead English learners to exclude regular plurals from compounding and optionally allowing irregulars.

Murphy (2000) and Haskell et al. (2003) suggested that children may learn that regular and irregular plurals are treated differently in compounds, not by just using examples of naturally occurring compounds but also from more general properties of language that are frequently exemplified in the input to which they are exposed. Murphy (2000) suggested that one reason children might omit regular plurals from English compounds could stem from the fact that the plural [-s] morpheme consistently is found at the end rather than in the middle of words. Children will omit the regular plural in producing compounds because including a plural [-s] within a compound would violate an overwhelmingly consistent pattern in the input—namely, that the plural [-s] should be in word-final position. Irregular plurals do not end in the [-s] morpheme and thus may be included in the middle of compounds. Thus, even if there are few examples of irregular plurals in compounds in the input, including irregular plurals within English compounds does not violate a consistent pattern in the input.

Despite the fact there are a few examples of regular plurals within compounds (as noted earlier), these forms are still comparatively rare and, therefore, a probabilistic account would lead to learning a pattern that tends not to prefer 197

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plurals within compounds. Note, however, that a probabilistic account would “allow” the occasional example of a regular plural in compounds, despite the fact that the overwhelming pattern is that there are no plurals in compounds.

The dual-mechanism model, claiming that no regular inflection should occur within compounds, struggles to adequately explain the exceptions.

Haskell et al. (2003) argued that two input-driven constraints linked to noun usage lead to the dissociation between regular and irregular plurals in compounds. First, in English, items that precede a noun tend not to be marked for plurality. This first constraint that Haskell et al. referred to as the semantic constraint works alongside their second phonetic constraint. The phonetic constraint refers to the fact that although many different-sounding words may precede a noun, words ending in a phoneme that sounds like a plural (/s/ or /z/) rarely do. Thus, the influence of the semantic and the phonetic constraints working in tandem leads to very few plurals that end in /s/ or /z/ appearing before a noun. When the item is plural but does not end in /s/ or /z/, only the semantic (not the phonetic) constraint is invoked, and under these circumstances, some plurals that do not end in /s/ (/z/) (i.e., irregular plurals) may be produced before a second noun. Table 1 shows Haskell et al.’s prediction of how different items should be treated before a second noun if, as they argued, compounding is governed by the co-influence of the semantic and the phonetic constraints on nouns.

According to Haskell et al.’s (2003) constraint satisfaction model, singular nouns being neither semantically nor phonetically plural1 may appear in compounds (e.g., rat catcher). Irregular plurals are semantically plural without being phonetically plural and thus they may appear optionally within compounds (mice catcher). Bifurcate pluralia tanta, items such as “scissors,” “pants,” and Table 1 Prediction of modifier acceptability by semantic and phonetic factors

Type of noun Singular Irregular plural Bifurcate pluralia tanta Phonetic /s/ or /z/ Voicing change Regular plural Possessives

Example

Semantically plural?

Phonetically plural?

Acceptability

Rat, mouse Mice Scissors Grass Knives Rats Cat’s

No Yes No No Yes Yes No

No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Acceptable Marginal Marginal Marginal Not acceptable Not acceptable Marginal

Data from Haskell et al. (2003).

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“binoculars,” which although being phonetically plural are considered semantically singular (Bock, Eberhard, Cutting, & Schriefers, 2001), should also appear optionally within compounds.2 Voicing change plurals are both semantically and phonetically similar to plurals and thus they should pattern with regular plurals and be omitted from compounds. Regular plurals are subject to both the phonetic and the semantic constraint and this is why they do not appear before a second noun. Possessives are not semantically plural; however, they are phonetically similar to plural and therefore, should rate alongside the irregulars for acceptability—in other words, be marginally acceptable. This prediction, of course, is problematic given that there are many examples of possessive [-s] morphemes internal to noun-noun compounds and thus their acceptability is more than marginal.

Haskell et al. (2003) argued that the phonetic and semantic constraints are learned from general properties of plurals and prenominal modifiers that children experience in the input they receive. Children may not hear items such as mice-chaser, but they hear many noun-noun compounds that do not include plurals, such as toy box or animal book. They also hear many plurals in other contexts and quickly learn how plurals should be situated in general language. Thus, they learn that in contrast to the way plurals are normally used, plurals do not appear before other nouns. They also hear many phrases in which prenominal modifiers (i.e., adjectives) that do not end in the /s/ or /z/ phoneme precede nouns (e.g., big box or red book). The idea then behind Haskell et al.’s constraint satisfaction model is that children use all of the relevant items they have heard (not just compounds themselves) to judge whether new items they experience are grammatical. This input-driven account is in line with other work that has shown that even low-frequency items in the input can influence the kind of compounds children produce (Murphy & Nicoladis, 2006).

It is important to highlight that underlying the argument in Haskell et al. (2003) is that it is not only compounds that contribute to English learners’ knowledge of how inflectional morphology might interact with compound forms. Rather, sequences of English language (whether they be compounds in the strict sense or not) contribute to this knowledge. Furthermore, exposure to both written and aural linguistic input would contribute to the development of this knowledge. The relevant sequences might consist of traditional compound forms (e.g., Adam’s apple or blackboard), whereas at other times the information about where specific phonological and morphological features occur in the input might also contribute. For example, the fact that the plural [-s] rarely occurs before a second noun (whether it be part of a compound or not) in child 199

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language input (Hayes, 2003) could play an important role in leading English speakers to exclude regular plurals from within compound sequences.3 Cunnings and Clahsen (2007) took issue with Haskell et al.’s (2003) explanation of why regular plurals are excluded from English compounds and argued that an important comparison to support Haskell et al.’s (2003) model would come from compounds with nonhead nouns that are semantically and morphologically singular but yet nonetheless sound plural. Cunnings and Clahsen argued that if Haskell et al.’s account is to be validated, speakers of English should “disprefer” fox chaser over wolf chaser given that fox ends in a phoneme that is phonologically similar to the regular plural marker in English.

They reported evidence that shows that adult native speakers of English equally prefer items such as fox chaser and wolf chaser despite fox “sounding” plural, thus disconfirming Haskell et al.’s prediction. Cunnings and Clahsen reported on their online processing study, which, in their view, supports the notion that participants exclude regular plurals from compounds due to a morphological constraint.

These arguments about whether and to what extent the input can guide speakers’ compound production can be extended to the input that L2 learners of English receive as well. Input-based features (e.g., where plurals are situated, the kinds of compounds and noun phrases L2 learners would be exposed to, etc.) could also lead an L2 learner to selectively exclude regular plurals from compounds. Given that L2 learners, like native speakers of English, tend to exclude regular plurals from compounds, it is reasonable that L2 learners also come to learn this from the relevant properties in the input. These are important ideas to consider within the L2 perspective, particularly because, to date, the significant majority of research investigating L2 learners’ knowledge of compounds has relied on production data only. This is problematic because if a learner has learned from the input that regulars should not be produced within English compounds (but irregulars are optionally allowed), then they will always demonstrate that dissociation in compound production tasks and, therefore, production data itself will not be in helpful considering alternative theoretical explanations for why regular plural inflection is disallowed within English compounds. Therefore, one of the main aims of this article was to explore the extent to which these more input-based or probabilistic explanations of how plural inflectional morphology and compounding interact might account for L2 learner behavior.

Given the problems associated with the dual-mechanism account (discussed earlier) and because Haskell et al.’s (2003) probabilistic model accounts for more of the data (i.e., their model allows for the few but rarely occurring Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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English compounds with regular plural inflection), Haskell et al.’s constraint satisfaction explanation of English compounding seems a much more plausible explanation of why regular plurals are excluded from English compounds (for both L1 and L2 compound production). A crucial element that needs further exploration, however, concerns possessive nouns. Possessive singular nouns have not been studied in relation to compounds either in the context of Haskell et al.’s (2003) study or Cunnings and Clahsen’s (2007) investigation. Singular possessive nouns are clearly not plurals (they do not violate the semantic constraint when appearing in front of a second noun). However, singular possessive nouns sound like plurals, violating Haskell et al.’s phonetic constraint. Their phonetic constraint would predict, therefore, that, at best, possessive nouns in compounds would be marginally acceptable. As Cunnings and Clahsen (2007) pointed out, a good test of the Haskell et al. (2003) model would come from items that are semantically and morphologically singular, yet are phonologically plural. The possessive noun fits this category. Language users frequently accept singular possessive nouns preceding a second noun in a noun-noun compound. Frequency counts of a sample of the CHILDES corpora (McWhinney & Snow, 1985) show that possessive nouns are almost always followed by a second noun. Because the possessive does frequently appear before a second noun, learners of English would be reluctant to include and/or accept regular plurals in compounds because the sequence “noun–[-s] morpheme–noun” is reserved for marking possession. Therefore, the differential processing of /s/ (or /z/) as a plural marker compared to /s/ (or /z/) as a possessive marker could be significant in the explanation for why there are so few examples of regular plural morphemes internal to noun-noun compounds, whereas irregular plurals are sometimes included on compound elicitation tasks. The research reported here explores the co-influence of both the possessive and plural morphological systems as an explanation for why regular and irregular plural morphology is dissociated in English, for both native speakers and L2 learners. This research, therefore, is an extension of the Haskell et al. (2003) model into the L2 domain and includes possessive morphology.

It was useful also to investigate how words ending in the phoneme /s/ (or /z/) would be treated in the middle of a word (i.e., before another noun in a compound) given that these phonemes sound like allomorphs of the plural [-s] morpheme. The Haskell et al. (2003) corpus analysis found that items appearing before a second noun tended to differ from regular plurals in that they did not end in the /s/ (or /z/) phoneme. They did not, however, test how language users treat nouns that end in the phoneme /s/ (or /z/), such as “kiss,” which are positioned before second nouns in English (e.g., kiss-stealer), items 201

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that Cunnings and Clahsen (2007) argued would be a better test of Haskell et al.’s account and should be dispreferred relative to singular nouns not ending in /s/ (or /z/). When these items ending in the phoneme /s/ (or /z/) precede a second noun, they violate the phonetic constraint because both /s/ and /z/ are phonemes that also sound like allomorphs of the plural [-s] morpheme. Thus, Haskell et al.’s model would predict that these items should be less preferable within compounds than singular nouns (which violate neither constraint), as preferable as irregular nouns (which also violate one constraint), but preferred over regular plurals (which violate both constraints). Therefore, how nonhead nouns ending in the phoneme /s/ (or /z/) are treated in compounds was also tested in this study.

To explore these ideas, native adult English speakers and adult Mandarin Chinese L2 learners of English were asked to process noun-noun compounds as part of a visual online lexical decision task (LDT). The noun-noun sequences used in this LDT consisted of either the regular plural [-s] morpheme, the possessive [-s] morpheme, or the /s/ or /z/ phoneme (which served no morphological function). As the participants were being presented with these sequences visually, the critical feature of these sequences was the presence (or absence) of the orthographic “s,” which could be realized either as /s/ or /z/.

This orthographic “s” either acted as a plural [-s] morpheme, a possessive [-s] morpheme, or just an “s” (realized phonetically as either /s/ or /z/). There is currently no research that has used an LDT task like this with L2 learners, and, as such, it is of interest to identify whether the same consistent dissociation between regulars and irregulars illustrated in L2 learners’ compound production can be found in a processing task. In this study, the LDT task was presented visually to all participants because it was felt that a visual presentation of the material would preclude any potential ambiguity for the L2 learners if the accent in which aural stimuli was presented was not familiar to the L2 learners (which might have been possible given the significant majority of their English-learning experience was in China—see the Methodology section). Furthermore, for some of the comparisons made in this study, the critical feature that distinguished between sets of stimuli is the presence (or absence) of a single orthographic “s” (realized phonetically as /s/ or /z/ and which may or may not also function as an [-s] morpheme depending on the example). Therefore, to avoid the possibility that participants might not hear this critical feature, the task was presented visually. Previous work has indicated quite clearly, however, that modality effects are important in L2 research (e.g., Murphy, 1997) and future studies of this type would profit from making explicit comparisons across modality conditions. Including the L2 learners in this study also allows Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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for exploration of a prediction concerning exposure to the input. Haskell et al.’s (2003) account, and this investigation of it, requires the learners to have had sufficient exposure to English input to have “learned” the relative patterns concerning which types of items are licensed before a noun in a noun-noun English compound. Native speakers of English will have had years of authentic rich input. However, L2 learners, although having had sufficient input to lead them to exclude regular plurals in compounds in production tasks, may not have had sufficient input to be able to manifest a preference for specific types of inflectional affixes within compounds. In other words, if, as Haskell et al. claimed, learners use all of the relevant information available to them in their compound production (i.e., not just compounds themselves), then, unlike in previous compound production studies in which the L2 learners pattern with the native speakers, a conceivable finding could be that L2 learners do not distinguish between compounds with possessives, regular plurals, or indeed other types of inflection.

Using a LDT in this research is useful, as in the majority of previous experiments, participants have been asked to either produce compounds (e.g., Gordon, 1985; Murphy, 2000) or have been asked to make preference judgements either without context (Senghas, Kim, Pinker, & Collins, 1991) or with context (Haskell et al., 2003). The LDT task, by definition, requires participants to reflect on an item and decide whether it is acceptable to them. Given that a focus of this study was to measure the relative difference in participants’ responses to noun-noun sequences that differed with respect to the absence (or presence) of the middle morpheme, it was felt that an LDT would be appropriate as a processing measure. Furthermore, in the LDT it is possible to measure how participants respond to structures that they might in fact never produce.

This will help identify much more precisely what kinds of forms they prefer.

A further advantage of an LDT is that it is possible to collect reaction times and thus obtain a measure of the relative degree to which some structures are more easily processed. In this experiment, reaction times and error rates were recorded for five different categories of words in the same mixed design. The types of compounds tested were ones in which the first noun was either (a) a regular plural noun, (b) a possessive noun, (c) an irregular plural noun, (d) a singular noun that ended in phonetic /s/ or /z/,4 or (e) a singular noun that ends in a phoneme other than /s/ or /z/.

The inclusion of these various items tested Haskell et al.’s (2003) explanation of compounding with L2 learners and the additional hypothesis suggested here that the relative distribution of plural [-s] and possessive [-s] morphology could influence how learners of English process (and produce) English 203

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compounds with inflectional morphology. This design enabled an investigation of the following research questions: 1. Will compounds containing possessive nouns be processed more quickly than compounds containing plural nouns?

2. Will the same preferences as shown by native speakers (NSs) be manifest by nonnative speakers (NNSs) who have had considerably less exposure to the input?

Furthermore, if, as Murphy (2000) suggested, plural [-s] is omitted from the middle of lexical items like compounds because it is associated with word finality, then: 3. Will compounds in which the first noun ends in /s/ (/z/), whether it is the plural form or not, be processed more slowly than compounds that do not include a first noun ending in /s/ (/z/)? Will this difference (if observed) be manifested by the NNSs who have had significantly less exposure to English? Assuming that the role of exposure is a critical variable, then one might predict that the L2 learners will not show this preference in the LDT task.

Methodology Design There were two groups of participants recruited for this experiment: native speakers (NSs) of English and nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English. Each participant was exposed to compounds made up from five different categories of nonhead word (1) regular plural, (2) possessive, (3) irregular plural, (4) phonetic /s/ (/z/), and (5) phoneme other than /s/ (/z/). It should be noted that as the task was presented visually; the participants were presented with an orthographic “s” in category 1, which functioned as a regular [-s] morpheme.

In category 2 the orthographic “s” functioned as a possessive [-s] morpheme.

In category 4 the orthographic “s” served no morphological function but was phonetically realized as an /s/ (/z/) phoneme. A methodological variable called “order” was also included in this design to preclude the possibility that results could be due to the order in which the items appeared. Therefore, half of the participants saw the stimuli in one random order and half of the participants saw it in a second random order. The dependent variables for the LDT were reaction time and accuracy (measured in terms of number of items correctly identified as words or nonwords).

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Participants Twenty-two undergraduate students in the Department of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire took part in the study in exchange for course credit.

All were native English speakers and had been educated in the United Kingdom continuously between the ages of 5 and 18 years. The average age was 24 years, ranging from 20 to 28. Twenty-one participants were female and one was male.

Whereas some of the NSs reported having had exposure to L2 instruction at school (French or German), none of the NS participants reported being bilingual or having any real degree of L2 knowledge or fluency and none of these NSs were studying an L2 at the time of participating in the study.

Thirteen Mandarin Chinese learners of English, with a mean age of 23 years, ranging from 21 to 25 (five males, eight females) were also recruited to participate in the study. These NNSs were studying English at a university in preparation for entry into a UK university for academic study. Within the context of their English language studies, they were tested on listening, reading, and writing skills from the University’s Bridging Programme, English for Academic purposes test. The range of scores from this test identified these students as advanced-level learners of English. These participants had started learning English in their early teens at school and had the significant majority of their exposure to English through classroom-based foreign language instruction in China, most of which was teacher-centered, using specifically designed English as a foreign language (EFL) materials. They had been living in the United Kingdom for a period of 4–6 months prior to being recruited into this study.

Thus, although they were advanced learners of English, they had had both a quantitatively and qualitatively different type of English exposure than the NSs. None of these NNS participants reported having spent any considerable amount of time in an English-speaking country prior to their residency in the United Kingdom at the time of testing.5 Materials and Stimuli Stimuli included English compounds (which were shown visually on a computer screen) for which the first noun in each compound was taken from one of five groups. These were (1) regular plural nouns, (2) possessive nouns, (3) irregular plural nouns, (4) singular nouns ending in phonetic /s/ (/z/), and (5) singular nouns ending in a phoneme other than /s/ (/z/). As noted earlier, the participants were presented with the orthographic “s” in categories 1, 2, and 4, but in each category, the orthographic “s” served different functions. In category 1 the orthographic “s” was a regular plural [-s] morpheme, in category 2 the orthographic “s” was a possessive [-s] morpheme, and in category 4 the 205

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orthographic “s” was a graphemic representation of the phoneme /s/ (/z/). The frequencies of these first nouns were calculated using the analysis in Francis and Kucera (1982). The mean frequency (and standard deviations) of each of the five sets of first nouns were as follows: Set 1 (regulars), M = 76.89, SD = 75.15; Set 2 (possessives), M = 39.17, SD = 49.52; Set 3 (irregulars), M = 215.25, SD = 260.91; Set 4 (singular nouns ending in /s/ [/z/]), M = 53.41, SD = 64.26; Set 5 (singular nouns not ending in /s/ [/z/], M = 140.76, SD = 191.81. These means were submitted to a one-way ANOVA, which indicated there was a significant difference among these sets’ means, F(4, 89) = 3.92, p < .01. Tukey HSD post hoc tests revealed that the irregular plural nouns used as the first nouns in the compounds had a higher mean overall frequency than those in the sets in which the first nouns were regular plurals, possessives, and singular nouns ending in /s/ (/z/). All other sets were not different from each other in overall mean frequency. The second noun in each compound was a deverbal noun (i.e., a noun formed from a verb; e.g., walker). The frequencies of these second nouns were as follows: Set 1 (regulars), M = 7.42, SD = 9.71; Set 2 (possessives), M = 17.13, SD = 20.80; Set 3 (irregulars), M = 215.25, SD = 260.91; Set 4 (singular nouns ending in /s/ [/z/]), M = 21.52, SD = 24.29; Set 5 (singular nouns not ending in /s/ [/z/]), M = 16.61, SD = 22.46. These means were submitted to a one-way ANOVA, which revealed a significant difference between the group frequency means of the second nouns in each of the compounds, F(4, 67) = 9.53, p < .01. Tukey’s HSD post hoc tests again revealed that the frequencies of the second nouns in the irregular set were significantly higher relative to the other four sets of second nouns. All other sets of second nouns were not different from each other in overall mean frequency.

The higher mean frequency from the irregular noun set is not problematic for the design of the study because the critical comparisons are between the regular and possessives and between the nouns ending in /s/ (/z/) against those that do not end in /s/ (/z/). These sets are matched on overall frequency. Table 2 shows examples of each type of compound tested (a full list of all stimuli is shown in the Appendix).

The apostrophe was omitted from all the possessive nouns, making it impossible to distinguish between the plural and possessive solely on the basis of punctuation.6 Each compound was preceded by a contextualizing sentence, which a pilot study with NSs had confirmed would lead participants to the intended interpretation of the first noun in the compound. As the task was an LDT, it was important to have some example of nonwords included in the set of stimuli. Therefore, for every compound made up of real words, a dummy compound was also tested made up of two nonwords by changing the letters of Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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Table 2 Examples of stimuli tested

Group (1) Regular plural nouns (n = 26) (2) Possessive nouns (n = 20) (3) Irregular plural nouns (n = 8) (4) singular noun sending in phoneme /s/ (/z/) (n = 24) (5) singular nouns ending in a phoneme other than /s/ (/z/) (n = 22)

Example of context sentence I feed four cats, a Burmese, a Siamese and two lovely old Persians. I enjoy being a Last week, I left my purse in a London taxi. Luckily, I managed to signal to the Women always get lowly jobs. In the nursery rhyme the farmer’s wife is nothing more than a We’ll have a larger lawn and mowing the grass will take longer. I’m thinking of employing a Stephen is so skilled at mixing cocktails that the hotel wants him to work permanently as a

Examples of compounds cats feeder

taxis driver mice chaser

grass cutter

drink server

the target compounds to yield a nonce compound item that was phonologically plausible in English (e.g., pent rasser). Responses to these dummy compounds were not used in any analyses. Sentences and compounds appeared centered on the computer screen in 48-point type. Stimuli were presented on an Apple iMac computer using Psyscope software (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, & Povost, 1993). Response times were recorded by the Psyscope software.

Procedure Participants were tested individually in an experimental cubicle. A preliminary briefing took place during which participants were told that they would be expected to categorize a series of compounds as being made up of real words or nonwords. It was also explained that compounds should be categorized as real if they were made up of two real English words even if they were two words that the participant would never use together. Participants were also told that words should be categorized as quickly as possible. Participants took part in six practice trials during which they were shown that the apostrophe would be left out of the possessive nouns used in the experiment. At the beginning of each trial, a contextualizing sentence appeared on screen. Participants were required to read the sentence out loud, after which they pressed the space bar causing an asterisk to appear on screen and the sentence to disappear. When they were 207

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ready to proceed, they pressed the space bar again and the compound appeared.

Reaction times were recorded from the moment the participant pressed the space bar for the second time and caused the compound to appear. Participants pressed one of two clearly marked keys on the keyboard corresponding to whether they thought the compound was a real item or not. There were 216 test trials. Each participant took approximately 45 min to complete the experiment.

Results Accuracy Data The participants’ responses to the noun-noun compounds were coded as correct or incorrect in terms of their acceptability of the legitimate compounds in English. An initial repeated measures analysis of variance was carried out with Order as the independent-samples factor, which indicated no effect of presentation order; therefore, all subsequent analyses were collapsed across this variable. A repeated measures multivariate ANOVA was carried out with one independent-samples factor (Group) tested at two levels (English NS, Chinese NNS) and one related-samples factor (Word Type) tested at five levels (regular plurals, possessives, irregular plurals, singular nouns ending in /s/ [/z/], and singular nouns ending in phoneme other than /s/ [/z/]). This analysis indicated an effect of Group, F(1, 33) = 16.42, p < .01, an effect of Word Type, F(4, 132) = 7.37, p < .01, but no Group × Word Type interaction. This analysis is illustrated in Figure 1. Tukey’s post hoc tests indicated a reliable difference in the number of errors made between items with a nonhead noun ending in phoneme /s/ (/z/) and all other word groups. Thus, the difference in errors for nonhead nouns ending in phoneme /s/ (/z/) and possessive [-s] was also reliable in this analysis.

Figure 1 illustrates that the English native speakers were over 96% accurate, and the Chinese NNSs were over 86% accurate. Therefore, neither group had any difficulty correctly distinguishing the real words in the compounds from the nonce compounds.

Reaction Time Data Reaction time (RT) to errors were removed from the dataset and only the RT to the real compounds were used in the RT analyses. As with the accuracy data, an initial ANOVA with Order as the only independent-samples variable was carried out to determine whether Order had an influence on how quickly participants responded on the LDT. There was no effect of Order (F < 1), so all subsequent analyses were carried out collapsed across this variable.

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Figure 1 Accuracy (in percent) in lexical decision task per category of nonhead noun in compound for English NSs and Chinese NNSs.

An overall (omnibus) F test was carried out with one independent-samples factor (Group: English NS, Chinese NNS) and one related-samples factor (Word Type: regular plurals, possessives, irregular plurals, singular nouns ending in /s/ [/z/], and singular nouns ending in phoneme other than /s/ [/z/]). This analysis indicated a reliable effect of Group, F(1, 33) = 21.87, p < .01, a reliable effect of Word Type, F(4, 132) = 28.79, p < .01, and a marginal Group Ă&#x2014; Word Type interaction, F(4, 132) = 2.29, p = .059.

Figure 2 illustrates that for all different types of nonhead nouns, the Chinese NNSs were slower to respond on the LDT than the English NS. To better evaluate the aims of this study, a series of planned comparisons was carried out on the NS and NNS RT data to determine the extent to which differences in responding were found across the relevant types of nonhead nouns. Due to the marked difference in the standard error for each of the two groups (see Table 3) in addition to the unequal ns in the two groups as well as 209

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Figure 2 Mean RTs to lexical decision on compounds with different inflection on the nonhead nouns for both English NSs and Chinese NNSs.

the nature of the research questions being investigated, all further comparisons across the categories of nonhead nouns within the two language groups were carried out separately. Table 3 presents the means (and standard errors) for the different categories of word type relevant for these comparisons for both groups of participants.

Table 3 Mean RT in milliseconds (and SE) for sets of nonhead nouns in comparisons Type of nonhead noun Regular Possessive Nonhead nouns ending in /s/ (/z/) Nonhead nouns not ending in /s/ (/z/) Irregular

English NS

Chinese NNS

1275 (104.00) 1190 (93.00) 1279.78 (99.15)

2181 (227.00) 2277 (245.00) 2254.19 (271.71)

1203.25 (97.21)

2301.36 (252.89)

1330 (101.00)

2509 (302.00)

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T tests were used to compare whether participants respond more quickly to compounds in which the nonhead noun was a possessive, relative to those that were regular plurals. The English NSs responded more quickly to the nonhead nouns that ended in the possessive [-s] than the regular [-s] plural, t(21) = 2.16, p < .05; however, this was not the case for the Chinese NNSs. This finding supports the prediction that possessive [-s] morphemes are preferred in nounnoun compounds over regular plural [-s] morphemes and that this preference is likely to depend on having had sufficient exposure to the input.

The next comparison examined whether participants responded differently to nonhead nouns that ended in /s/ (/z/) (e.g., regular plurals, possessive morphemes, and singular nouns that ended in /s/ [/z/]) relative to nonhead nouns that did not end in /s/ (/z/). If an /s/ (/z/) in the word-final position is associated with plurality and/or word finality, then participants would take longer to respond to compounds in which the nonhead noun ended in an /s/ (/z/) than if there was no /s/ (/z/) at the end of the nonhead nouns. English NS participants responded more quickly to compounds in which the nonhead noun did not have an /s/ (/z/) than those that did, t(21) = 4.37, p < .05. The mean RTs for the Chinese NNSs were not reliably different. This finding supports the idea of the phonetic constraint proposed by Haskell et al. (2003) and the idea suggested here that /s/ (/z/) in the middle of a noun-noun sequence is harder to process because it is comparatively less frequent in the input.

Further support for this notion comes from the planned comparison carried out to test whether compounds with singular nonhead nouns ending in a phoneme /s/ (/z/) would be processed more slowly than compounds with singular nonhead nouns ending in other phonemes. Native English speakers processed singular nonhead nouns not ending in /s/ (/z/) (e.g., drink) faster than they did those singular nonhead nouns that did end in /s/ (/z/) (e.g., grass), t(21) = 2.572, p < 0.05. There was no difference in this comparison for the Chinese NNSs. Native speakers of English took longer to respond to compounds that ended in /s/ (/z/), even when the /s/ (/z/) was a phoneme and served no morphological function, relative to those nonhead nouns that did not end in /s/ (/z/). The Chinese NNS participants, who had significantly less exposure to authentic input, did not differ in this comparison.

A final comparison compared possessive morphology on nonhead nouns relative to irregulars. Recall from Table 1 that Haskell et al.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2003) model predicted that irregulars and possessives would both be marginally acceptable within compounds, given that they both violate one of the two constraints. If this were the case, then possessives would not be different than irregulars on this task. In this study, English NSs were faster to respond to compounds with 211

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possessive morphology on the nonhead noun than to compounds with irregular nonhead noun plurals, t(21) = 3.45, p < .01. This result is particularly interesting, as the frequency of the irregular nouns used in these stimuli was significantly higher than the possessive items, and yet the NSs were slower to respond to these in noun-noun compounds. Again, there was no reliable difference in this comparison for the Chinese NNSs. This comparison does not support Haskell et al.’s suggestion that possessives and irregulars in compounds are both marginally acceptable but does support the suggestion made in this article that learning about where possessives are allowed in noun-noun sequences is a key to understanding why learners exclude regular plurals in compounds in English.

Discussion The purpose of this study was to explore the idea that the input to which English learners (both L1 and L2) are exposed is sufficient to lead to regular plurals being excluded from within English noun-noun deverbal compounds.

Haskell et al. (2003) had argued that both phonetic and semantic constraints that are learned from the input can lead to English NSs dissociating regular from irregular plurals within compounds. Two issues related to Haskell et al.’s model were explored in this article. The first was whether English NSs responded more quickly to possessive [-s] morphology in compounds than regular plural morphology. The hypothesis was that in English, learners exclude plurals from compounds because the sequence “noun–[-s] morpheme–noun” in English more frequently marks possession. If this idea is valid, then learners would process possessive morphemes within compounds more quickly than regular plurals. This was important because previous studies had shown that L2 learners, like NSs of English, tend not to produce regular plurals within compounds (e.g., Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000). Whether they would show the same preferences (as measured by RT) to different types of inflection within compounds was an issue worth investigating.

The important data for the focus of this article was the RT data, although the accuracy data were useful to illustrate that the task was easily completed for all participants. Separate comparisons revealed that only the NSs of English were faster to respond to compounds with possessive morphology relative to regular plural morphology. Furthermore, only the NSs of English processed compounds without an /s/ (/z/) on the nonhead noun faster than those compounds with an internal /s/ (/z/) on the nonhead noun. Finally, only the NSs of English processed Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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singular nonhead noun compounds more quickly than other singular nonhead nouns that ended in a phoneme /s/ (/z/).

These results support the notion that English learners might exclude regular plurals within compounds because possessive morphemes consistently appear internal to noun-noun sequences in English. Like Haskell et al. (2003), these findings are consistent with the view that learning about a wider range of patterns in English, such as prenominal modifiers and possessive morphology, can lead learners to exclude regular morphemes from within compounds, without having to invoke some supposed innate constraint. The dual-mechanism model bars any regular “rule-based” inflection internal to compounds. If all regular inflections were to be barred from compounds, then neither regular plurals nor possessive forms would appear within compounds. The possessive form within a compound is productive and, therefore, its occurrence raises a problem for the dual-mechanism model. Furthermore, if all regular inflections were prohibited from compounds, then participants would respond similarly to both regular plural inflection and regular possessive inflection. The findings in this study illustrate that the NSs responded more quickly to the possessive inflection.

An account that argues for a constraint against regular morphology in compounds is less consistent with these findings than an account that is based on the occurrence of patterns in the input.

Cunnings and Clahsen (2007) suggested that items that were “morphologically and semantically singular but phonologically resemble the plural” (p. 481) would be better tests of the original Haskell et al. (2003) claim. The possessive form is both morphologically and semantically singular and yet participants respond more quickly to these items in an LDT. The participants were slower to respond to items with an orthographic “s,” which is phonetically realized as either the /s/or /z/ phoneme at the end of the nonhead noun—a phoneme that does not have a morphological function, but if phonetically realized, would sound like a plural form. These findings are more consistent with an inputbased account than an account that argues that morphology is prohibited within compounds. Both the possessive [-s] compounds and the compounds in which the nonhead noun ends in an /s/ (/z/) phoneme that is not a plural are examples of those items that are morphologically and semantically singular but sound plural. The participants respond more quickly to one type (possessive [-s]) and more slowly to the other (phonetic /s/ [/z/]). These findings are consistent with the input-based account because it is the relative occurrence of these items in the input that is likely to be causing the differential response times. NS participants responded more quickly to the possessive [-s] items because they occur relatively frequently in the input. The same participants responded more 213

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slowly to the phoneme /s/ (/z/) items because they are comparatively infrequent. A final piece of evidence that supports this conclusion comes from the comparison between the possessive [-s] compounds and those with irregular inflection. Both types of inflections should be licensed within compounds, but the NS participants were faster to respond to the possessive [-s] morphology in compounds than the irregular plurals. Again, the likely explanation for this finding is that possessive [-s] morphology is comparatively frequent in compounds relative to irregular plural morphology. Despite these findings and their implications, however, a stronger test of an input-based approach would focus on language development as opposed to only processing, as was carried out in this study. Although these preliminary data from a processing-oriented task was encouraging, further research could explore the precise role of different input factors on the development of language (both the L1 and L2).

The fact that the advanced L2 learners of English did not show the same preferences (as measured by RTs) as the NSs further suggests that the key is learning about these different patterns, which takes time. Given that in previous compound production studies (e.g., Clahsen, 1995; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000), L2 learners have shown the same pattern as NSs in terms of excluding regular plurals underscores this point. The NNSs tested in this study presumably had not had sufficient exposure to English to have established specific preferences for when [-s] (or /s/ [/z/]) is allowed within compounds.

However, what is missing from this study is whether these same NNSs would have excluded regular plurals from compounds in production. It is likely they would have because they were advanced learners of English and other research that has tested L2 learners’ compound production in this way has consistently shown a tendency to exclude regulars from compounds (Clahsen, 1995; Garc´ıa Mayo, 2006; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000); thus, there is no reason to expect that the L2 learners in this study would not have also done also.

It is somewhat surprising, however, that these advanced L2 learners did not show a difference in processing between the nonhead nouns that did not end in /s/ (/z/) (drink) relative to those that did (grass). If, as suggested here, learners learn that /s/ (/z/) internal to a noun-noun sequence is a sequence predominantly used for marking possession, then presumably these L2 learners should also have preferred singular nonhead nouns not ending in /s/ (/z/) over those that did end in /s/ (/z/). It could be that this more processing-oriented (not production) task was generally more difficult for them, which led them to take longer across all categories of nonhead nouns. Alternatively, it could be that even advanced learners of English did not yet have enough exposure to English and the relevant distributional patterns of phonemes and morphemes in different sequences to Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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show the same preferences as the NSs. In any case, it is clear that more work needs to be done to more precisely measure the development of many different aspects of morphology in tandem, in both children learning English as their L1 and learners who are developing their knowledge of English as an L2. For example, Cunnings and Clahsen’s (2007) paradigm using eye movements in online compound processing would be an appropriate methodology to use here.

It might also be useful to compare within one study the different methodologies used to identify the extent to which the findings are consistent.

The findings in the present study are largely consistent with the constraint satisfaction model of Haskell et al. (2003), in that differences were found between regular and possessive morphology on the nonhead noun in English NSs. Haskell et al. argued that regulars violating both semantic and phonetic constraints would be less preferable within compounds than possessives. Their model also predicted that irregular and possessives within compounds would be equally marginal. However, the RT data for NSs show that they are faster to respond to possessive morphology on the nonhead noun than irregular morphology, despite the fact that the post hoc tests on the mean frequencies of these items showed that the irregulars had a higher mean frequency than the possessives. Research on lexical access has shown that high-frequency items tend to be responded to more quickly than lower frequency items (e.g., Alario, Costa, & Caramazza, 2002); yet the reverse pattern was found here. This result suggests that these items (irregulars and possessives) are not equally marginal in compounds, but, rather, the possessives are “preferred” over the irregulars in compounds as measured by RTs. This finding is consistent with the idea that the input is an important factor here because irregular plural nouns are rare in naturally occurring noun-noun compounds. Thus, despite their overall higher frequency, when irregulars appear in a noun-noun compound, they take longer to process than possessive nouns that do appear in the input. This comparison also supports the suggestion that learning about possessive morphology in English is a key ingredient leading English speakers to exclude regular inflection from within compounds. The fact that the Chinese NNSs did not show this effect again supports the suggestion that learning about these patterns requires sufficient exposure to the input. Therefore, although Haskell et al.’s (2003) explanation of how learners of English come to exclude regular plurals from compounds goes a long way in explaining this aspect of the interaction between inflectional morphologies in compounds, the evidence presented in this article illustrates that, minimally, their model needs to be expanded to take into account the particular contribution made by learning about the possessive morpheme in English, for both L1 and L2 learners.

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Another interesting issue that this study raises is the difference between production and lexical decision tasks. As identified earlier, most of the studies carried out to date investigating different types of inflections within compounds have either used a compound production task (e.g., Clahsen, 1995; Lardiere, 1995; Murphy, 2000) or a preference task (Haskell et al., 2003; Senghas et al., 1991). These tasks have shown that participants will produce irregular plurals in compounds more than regulars or choose an irregular plural within a compound more often than a regular plural when asked directly for their preference.

However, this study illustrates that when asked to process compounds with irregular morphology, NSs tend to take longer to do so than with possessives.

Although participants might occasionally produce irregulars in compound elicitation tasks, the evidence presented here shows that they take longer to decide that an irregular plural in a compound is acceptable over a possessive noun.

This difference highlights the importance of using different tasks, because the production data might lead one to conclude that learners somehow “like” irregulars in compounds. In fact, the review of the literature presented in Hayes, Smith, and Murphy (2005) illustrates that as the NS participants get older, fewer and fewer plurals of any type (either regular or irregular) are produced within compounds. The children tested in studies such as Gordon (1985) and the L2 learners tested in studies such as Lardiere (1995) and Murphy (2000) are likely then to have excluded regular plurals from their compounds because of the competition between the regular and possessive morpheme (i.e., they will have already had sufficient input to know that the sequence “noun–[-s] morpheme–noun” is reserved for marking possession in English). They may have included irregulars, however, because there is no competition between irregular plural morphology and possessive morphology.

The findings presented in this article are preliminary at this point and the conclusions drawn from this study must be considered within the methodological constraints inherent in the design (e.g., small sample sizes, unequal variability across groups, limitations of the stimuli, etc.). These preliminary results, however, are encouraging and warrant more research with larger sample sizes, different types of processing tasks, stimuli, and methodologies to obtain a more detailed and clearer picture of the co-influence of different morphological forms with respect to the interaction between inflectional morphology and compounding. Other issues that need exploring include uncovering how much input is required before a learner of English comes to work out the relative patterns of where different aspects of morphology appear in English grammar. How long does it take for a learner of English to learn that the sequence “noun–[-s]–noun” more frequently marks possession? When does a preference Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194–220

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manifest in a production task become measurable in lexical access or comprehension tasks? Further work is required on children learning English as their L1 and L2 learners of English in different language learning contexts (specifically where the exposure to English is different) to be able to answer these questions.

It would be profitable also to start using more sophisticated measures, such as in Cunnings and Clahsen (2007), who measured eye movements in reading to specify where these differences are occurring. Having done so, the evidence will more clearly identify the relative contribution that learning about other prenominal modifiers has to English compound production and processing.

Revised version accepted 10 September 2009

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Appendix List of Words (Compounds) Used as Stimuli Regular plurals cuts maker twins minder claims processor Automatic Weapons locator records keeper Admissions coordinator drinks server wages earner calves exerciser nurses trainer foxes watcher cases carrier horses groomer houses finder gates opener cats feeder dogs washer Parks runner athletes trainer logs carrier cars washer Terms user schools inspector months counter hands washer weeks planner

Possessives girls painter taxis driver cars seller swans keeper goats washer mugs user cars protector fines payer gowns maker dogs walker guns holder rats feeder birds trainer lamps lighter meals server jumpers knitter bolts mender pigs feeder plumbers employer cows leader

Singular nonhead nouns ending in /s/ (/z/) phonemes kiss stealer lass chaser floss holder brass player hiss maker class judger mess maker dross seeker fuss maker grass cutter moss clearer loss leader glass washer pass marker cuss sayer bliss maker mass producer bass player gas heater bus traveller news editor cross stitcher ass feeder boss judger

(Continued)

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Murphy and Hayes

Influence of the Middle Morpheme

Appendix Continued Irregular plurals teeth cleaner feet washer women painter lice finder men chaser geese keeper mice chaser children minder

Language Learning 60:1, March 2010, pp. 194â&#x20AC;&#x201C;220

Singular nonhead nouns not ending in the phoneme /s/ or/z/ baby feeder car parker claim staker record holder dog trainer park cleaner friend seeker bull rider calf washer work avoider cat minder girl chaser admission checker gate closer weapon loader home carer twin tester drink mixer record holder project loser log burner

220