Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words
An interesting area of psycholinguistic inquiry is to discover the way morphological structures are stored in the human mind and how they are retrieved during comprehension or production of language. The current study probed into what goes on in the mind of EFL learners when processing derivational...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Allameh Tabataba'i University Press
2014-06-01
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| Series: | Issues in Language Teaching |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ilt.atu.ac.ir/article_1368_a76b5b28042832e0e3380d358cb4a852.pdf |
| _version_ | 1797378260192985088 |
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| author | Mohamad Javad Rezai Roya Pakbaz |
| author_facet | Mohamad Javad Rezai Roya Pakbaz |
| author_sort | Mohamad Javad Rezai |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | An interesting area of psycholinguistic inquiry is to discover the way morphological structures are stored in the human mind and how they are retrieved during comprehension or production of language. The current study probed into what goes on in the mind of EFL learners when processing derivational morphology and how English and Persian derivational suffixes are processed. 60 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency whose proficiency level were determined through Oxford Quick Placement Test, participated in masked priming experiments using E-prime software. Two separate priming tasks in Persian and English were conducted during the course of this study. The target words were primed in three ways: identity (careful"careful), related (care"careful) and control primes (desire"careful). Participants’ reaction times were measured by E-prime software and were fed into SPSS software for further analysis. The results indicated that Proficiency plays a role in the way derivational morphology is processed, because at lower proficiency levels more decomposition was detected while more proficient participants utilized more whole-word representation. Furthermore, Persian learners of English processing of the derived words could not be assigned strictly to decomposition or whole-word representations in the mind. What seems more plausible to assume is that highly frequent words (whether base or suffix frequency) as well as derived words with more productive suffixes are stored as whole words but lower base and morpheme frequency ones and those with suffixes having less productivity are decomposed. These findings lend further support to dual route model. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-08T20:04:14Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-99741e2765154968ae915349003d965a |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2322-3715 2476-6194 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-08T20:04:14Z |
| publishDate | 2014-06-01 |
| publisher | Allameh Tabataba'i University Press |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Issues in Language Teaching |
| spelling | doaj.art-99741e2765154968ae915349003d965a2023-12-23T10:46:18ZengAllameh Tabataba'i University PressIssues in Language Teaching2322-37152476-61942014-06-013137641368Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived WordsMohamad Javad Rezai0Roya Pakbaz1Assistant Professor, Yazd University, IranM.A. in TEFL, Yazd University, IranAn interesting area of psycholinguistic inquiry is to discover the way morphological structures are stored in the human mind and how they are retrieved during comprehension or production of language. The current study probed into what goes on in the mind of EFL learners when processing derivational morphology and how English and Persian derivational suffixes are processed. 60 Iranian EFL learners at intermediate and advanced levels of proficiency whose proficiency level were determined through Oxford Quick Placement Test, participated in masked priming experiments using E-prime software. Two separate priming tasks in Persian and English were conducted during the course of this study. The target words were primed in three ways: identity (careful"careful), related (care"careful) and control primes (desire"careful). Participants’ reaction times were measured by E-prime software and were fed into SPSS software for further analysis. The results indicated that Proficiency plays a role in the way derivational morphology is processed, because at lower proficiency levels more decomposition was detected while more proficient participants utilized more whole-word representation. Furthermore, Persian learners of English processing of the derived words could not be assigned strictly to decomposition or whole-word representations in the mind. What seems more plausible to assume is that highly frequent words (whether base or suffix frequency) as well as derived words with more productive suffixes are stored as whole words but lower base and morpheme frequency ones and those with suffixes having less productivity are decomposed. These findings lend further support to dual route model.https://ilt.atu.ac.ir/article_1368_a76b5b28042832e0e3380d358cb4a852.pdfmorphological wordderivational affixesprocessingfrequencydual-route model |
| spellingShingle | Mohamad Javad Rezai Roya Pakbaz Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words Issues in Language Teaching morphological word derivational affixes processing frequency dual-route model |
| title | Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words |
| title_full | Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words |
| title_fullStr | Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words |
| title_full_unstemmed | Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words |
| title_short | Iranian EFL Learners' Processing of English Derived Words |
| title_sort | iranian efl learners processing of english derived words |
| topic | morphological word derivational affixes processing frequency dual-route model |
| url | https://ilt.atu.ac.ir/article_1368_a76b5b28042832e0e3380d358cb4a852.pdf |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT mohamadjavadrezai iranianefllearnersprocessingofenglishderivedwords AT royapakbaz iranianefllearnersprocessingofenglishderivedwords |