Crosslinguistic Interactions in the Development of L2 Intraword Awareness: Effects of Logographic Processing Experience

K. Koda
pp. 27-46.

Abstract

The study investigated the effects of L1 logographic experience on the development of L2 intraword morphological awareness among adult L2 learners of English (ESL) with differential amounts of logographic and alphabetic L 1 processing experience. Intraword awareness pertains to the learner’s understanding of words’ internal structure and the ability to utilize such structural knowledge during lexical processing. Based on a crosslinguistic analysis of lexical structure in English and Chinese, three specific predictions were made. ESL learners with logographic L1 background would be (a) less sensitive to intraword structural variations, (b) less perceptive to the constraints on morpheme concatenation, and (c) less efficient in morphological analysis than those with alphabetic L1 background. The study tested these predictions empirically by comparing five specific aspects of L2 morphological awareness among Chinese (non-concatenative/logographic) and Korean (concatenative/alphabetic-syllabary) ESL learners. The data demonstrated that (1) the groups did not differ in intraword structural sensitivity; (2) Korean learners were more efficient than Chinese in analyzing structurally ambiguous real English words; (3) virtually no difference existed between the groups with respect to either relational or syntactic awareness; and (4) Korean participants were more sensitive than the Chinese to distributional constraints on English morpheme concatenation. Viewed collectively, these findings seem to suggest that L1 processing experience influences L2 intraword awareness in specific and predictable ways.

Key words: bilingual processing, morpheme, metalinguistic awareness