Imageability is the ability of words to elicit mental sensory images of their referents. Recent research has suggested that imageability facilitates the processing and acquisition of inflected word forms. The present study examined whether inflected word forms are acquired earlier in highly imageable words in Czech children. Parents of 317 children (mean age 28 months) were asked whether their child used specific forms of 63 nouns and 35 verbs. For nouns, the forms were nominative singular and plural; for verbs, third person singular present, second person singular present, and the past participle. Plural nouns, and second person and past participle verbs were considered the marked, inflected forms. Analyses revealed that imageability is positively related to the use of the inflected form, even when controlling for the use of the unmarked form in each child, and the inflected form frequency. Two main explanations are suggested: facilitation of form retrieval from long-term memory, or facilitation of inflected form processing, especially by supporting the representations in working memory.
This study explores how Czech-German late bilinguals process German (L2) noun-noun compounds. Using a lexical decision task combined with translation constituent priming, we investigated two factors potentially influencing the L2 compound processing: (a) the compound translation corresponds to one derived noun (e.g., Abendstern—večernice, ‘evening star') or to an adjective + noun phrase (e.g., Weizenmehl—pšeničná mouka, ‘wheat flour'); and (b) the compound translation entails translations of compound constituents (L1 translation of Abendstern, večernice, includes only first constituent, i.e. modifier, Abend = večer, ‘evening'; L1 translation of Weizenmehl, pšeničná mouka, includes both constituents, Weizen = pšenice, ‘wheat', Mehl = mouka, ‘flour'). Two experiments were conducted; one focussing on head priming, the other on modifier priming. The results are in line with non-selective bilingual access and decomposition of L2 compounds. They reveal no influence of factor (a), while (b) affects processing.
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