Published in: Language Learning 60: 21-43. Morphological Structure in Native and Non-Native Language Processing

This article presents a selective overview of studies that have investigated how advanced adult second language (L2) learners process morphologically complex words. The studies reported here have used different kinds of experimental tasks (including speeded grammaticality judgments, lexical decision, or priming) to examine three domains of morphological processing (regular and irregular inflection, derived word forms, and morphosyntactic phenomena) in L2 learners from typologically different L1 backgrounds. The results from these studies demonstrate clear differences between native and non-native processing in all three domains, indicating that adult L2 learners are less sensitive to morphological structure than native speakers and rely more on lexical storage than on morphological parsing during processing.