Word Frequency Effects and Plurality in L2 Word Recognition—A Preliminary Study—

Word Frequency Effects and Plurality in L2 Word Recognition

—A Preliminary Study–June 28, 201545th CELES

Wakayama University1

The handout is available from…

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Overview• Introduction• Background• The Present Study• Results• Discussion• Conclusion

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• Morphology• Inflectional morphology

• -ed, -ing, 3rd-person -s, plural -s

• Derivational morphology• prefix

• pro- (e.g., proactive), re- (e.g., reactive) • suffix

• -ness (e.g., kindness), -ly (e.g., kindly)

Introduction6

Morphological Processing






Introduction7







Introduction8


• Recognition process• Visual word recognition

• How morphology is processed in reading• Auditory word recognition

• How morphology is processed in listening

Introduction9


• Recognition process• Visual word recognition

• How morphology is processed in reading• Auditory word recognition

• How morphology is processed in listening

Introduction10


Findings of This Study• Task characteristics change the

process of morphological processing

• Only plural-dominant nouns have a strong connection to concepts

11Introduction

Yu TAMURA (Graduate School, Nagoua Univ.)

Yoshito NISHIMURA (Graduate School, Nagoua Univ.)

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• Word Association Hypothesis

Background15

Bilingual Mental Lexicon

L2L1

Concepts

• Conceptual Mediation Hypothesis

Background16


L2L1

Concepts

• the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994)

Background17


L2L1

Concepts

• The developmental hypothesis• the more proficiency develops, the stronger the

connection between concepts and L2 becomes (e.g., Kawakami, 1994)

• the more proficiency develops, the less interference effects of L1 occur (e.g., Sunderman & Kroll, 2006)

• conceptual links and processing skills gradually develop (e.g., Yamashita, 2007)

Background18


• Factors affecting the connections• Frequency

• high frequency L2 words activate conceptual links (e.g., Habuchi, 2005)

• Concreteness• concrete and high frequency words

processed through concept mediation (e.g., Nakagawa, 2009)

Background19


• Used to approach the issue of morphological processing and its storage • For reception (e.g., Baayen, Dijkstra, &

Schreuder, 1997; Baayen, Lieber, & Schreuder, 1997; Sereno & Jongman, 1997; Taft, 2004)

• For production (e.g., Baayen, Levelt, Schreuder, & Ernestus, 2008; New, Brysbaert, Segui, Ferrand, & Rastle, 2004; Beyersmanna, Dutton, Amer, Schiller, & Britta, 2015)

Background20

Frequency Effects

• Regularly inflected forms • High frequency -> full-form storage• Low frequency -> morphological decomposition

(e.g., Stemberger & MacWhinny, 1991)

Background21

Frequency Effects

• Two types of number features• conceptual number

• “the numerosity of the subject’s referent in the speaker’s mental model” (Humphreys & Bock, 2005)

• e.g., scissors, [bacon and eggs]• grammatical number

• linguistically expressed number• e.g., plural marker -s in English

Background22

Plurality

• Conceptual plural information disturbs number agreement process (e.g., Eberhard, 1999; Humphreys & Bock, 2005; Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Semenza, 1995; Vigliocco, Hartsuiker, Jarema, & Kolk, 1996)

• Plurality is psycholinguistically marked (e.g., Bock & Miller, 1991)

• High frequency plurals (plural-dominant plurals) might have a strong connection to plurality (Barker & Nicol, 2000)

• L2 learners may be able to represent conceptual plurality (Kusanagi, Tamura, & Fukuta, 2015)

Background23

Plurality

• Researching in word recognition process…• frequency• concreteness

Background24

Motivation of the study

• Researching in word recognition process…• frequency• concreteness• grammatical information <-this should also be

stored with L2 words and used in processing

• As a preliminary study• this study focused on plurality (number

information)

Background25

Motivation of the study

• High frequency -> conceptual links• Plural-dominant plurals -> strong link to plurality• L2 learners’ use of conceptual plurality

• Plural dominant-plurals might be processed through conceptual link?

Background26

Hypothesis

• High frequency -> conceptual links• Plural-dominant plurals -> strong link to plurality• L2 learners’ use of conceptual plurality

• Plural dominant-plurals might be processed through conceptual link?

• This advantage might not be found through L1 route <- Japanese doesn’t mark number morphologically.

Background27

Hypothesis

• Plural-dominant plurals• Singular-dominant singulars

Background28

Hypothesis

L2L1

Concepts

• At least high frequent plurals might be represented with number information either semantically or morphologically.

Background29

Hypothesis


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• 32 Japanese undergraduate and graduate students

• 58% had some experience in staying in English-speaking countries(Min = 2 weeks, Max = 54 months)

Table 1. Background Information of the Participants

The Present Study32

Participants

Age TOEIC ScoreN M SD M SD

Participants 32 24.77 5.34 824.22 113.12

1. Frequency list of nouns (both singular and plural forms) from British National Corpus (BNC)

2. 12 words which double or triple in frequency of singular form compared to plural form -> singular-dominant words

The Present Study33

Stimuli

3. 12 words which double or triple in frequency of plural form compared to singular form -> plural dominant words

4. 12 words whose frequency of singular and plural form was almost same. -> control words

The Present Study34

Stimuli

• The base frequency (sig + pl) was controlled among the three groups

Table 2. Mean Frequency and SD in Parentheses

The Present Study35

Stimuli

singular plural base

sig-domminant 25.55(15.26)

10.38(6.82)

35.93(21.52)

pl-dominant 9.23(5.71)

21.84(16.52)

31.06(21.63)

control 18.50(9.89)

18.08(10.32)

36.58(19.45)

The Present Study36

Stimuli

sig-dominant pl-dominant controlcameradragonenginesaladshiptrainbowl

carpetcat

eaglephotosword

biscuitleafnail

shoesocktoy

beanflowerglove

lippotatosoldier

cloudgoat

monkeynurse

pigticketbeeeareggkey

mountainrabbit

Table 3. List of Test Items

• Norming study• Participants:

• 3 Japanese graduate students• Task:

• Picture naming in English and Japanese• Results:

• All the test pictures correctly named as target L2 and L1

• All the filler pictures elicited non-target words -> NO responses could work

The Present Study37

Stimuli

•Picture-matching Task on PC

The Present Study38

Experiment

+

1000mscat

+

500ms

1000ms

500ms

•L1-matching Task on PC

The Present Study39

Experiment

+

1000mscat

+

猫

500ms

1000ms

500ms

• judge whether the target L2 words matched L1 translation / picture

• 36 test items (12*3) presented either in singular or plural form

• 18 test items (6*3) per task

• Carefully counterbalanced

• 18 test items -> always YES response

• 36 filler items -> YES: 18 items, NO: 18 items

The Present Study40

Experiment

• The order of the tasks counterbalanced: • Pic -> L1, L1 -> Pic

• After the two tasks• Familiarity questionnaire (instructions are in

Japanese)

• 5-point Likert scale

• 36 items (singular or plural form) which the participants did not see in the matching tasks

• “How much have you seen or heard the words?” (1: I’ve never seen – 5: I’ve often seen )

The Present Study41

Experiment

• Erroneous responses removed (L1-matching: 5%, Pic-matching: 4%)

• Log transformation (base = 2)• Outliers (M +/- 2SD of each participant) removed

(L1-matching: 4%, Pic-matching: 5%)

The Present Study42

Analysis

• 2*3*2 ANOVA (within participants)• Task type (2 levels) : L1/ picture matching• Noun type (3 levels) : singular-dominant,

plural-dominant, control• Presentation condition(2 levels): singular/

plural form• Statistically significant three-way interaction• F (2, 62) = 3.41, p < .05

The Present Study43

Analysis

• 3*2 ANOVA (within participants) for each task• Noun type (3 levels)

• singular-dominant, plural-dominant, control• Presentation condition(2 levels)

• singular/ plural form

The Present Study44

Analysis


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Overall Accuracy Scores

Results

k M SD 95%CIPicture-mathing 18 .94 .06 [.92, .96]

L1-matching 18 .96 .05 [.94, .98]

Table 4. Descriptive Statistics of Overall Mean Accuracy Scores

N = 32

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L1 Matching

Results

k M SD 95%CI

sig-domminantsig 3 573 217 [498, 648]pl 3 616 237 [534, 698]

pl-dominantsig 3 551 207 [479, 623]pl 3 584 166 [526, 641]

controlsig 3 575 183 [511, 638]pl 3 563 191 [500, 625]

Table 5. Descriptive Statistics of Reading Time in L1-matching task(ms)

N = 32

Results49

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singular−dominant plural−dominant control

singularplural

L1-matching (Log RT)

Note. Error bar represents 95%CI

Results50

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Almost significant interactionF(1, 53) = 2.58, p = .09, ηp2 = .08

Results51

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Significant simple main effectsF(1, 31) = 5.54, p = .03, ηp2 = .15

Results52

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Results53

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a

No significant simple main effectsF(1, 31) = 0.27, p = .60, ηp2 = .01

Results54

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Results55

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But no meaningful differences

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Picture Matching

Results

K M SD 95%CI

sig-domminantsig 3 619 185 [554, 683]pl 3 652 202 [582, 722]

pl-dominantsig 3 650 210 [578, 723]pl 3 580 203 [509, 650]

controlsig 3 592 158 [537, 646]pl 3 584 180 [522, 646]

Table 6. Descriptive Statistics of Reading Time in Picture-matching task(ms)

N = 32

Results57

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Picture-matching (Log RT)


Results58

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Significant interactionF(2, 62) = 4.28, p = .02, ηp2 = .12

Results59

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Results60

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Results61

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Results62

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sig > pl (t [31] = 2.88, p = .001)

Results63

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sig > ctrl (t [31] = 2.58, p = .015)

Results64

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pl = ctrl (t [31] = 0.66, p = .514)

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Familiarity Questionnaire

Results

k M SD 95%CI

sig-domminantsig 6 4.44 0.59 [4.24, 4.65]pl 6 4.47 0.56 [4.27, 4.66]

pl-dominantsig 6 4.40 0.67 [4.16, 4.63]pl 6 4.55 0.53 [4.36, 4.73]

controlsig 6 4.51 0.55 [4.32, 4.70]pl 6 4.49 0.71 [4.24, 4.73]

Table 7. Descriptive Statistics of the Results of the Familiarity Questionnaire

N = 32, 5-point Likert scale


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• singular-dominant• singular form (e.g., cat) • plural form (e.g., cats)

• plural-dominant• singular form (e.g., bean)• plural form (e.g., beans)

Discussion68

L1 Matching

• singular-dominant• singular form (e.g., cat) -> faster• plural form (e.g., cats)

• plural-dominant• singular form (e.g., bean) -> faster• plural form (e.g., beans)

Discussion69

L1 Matching

• singular forms• singular-dominant (e.g., cat) • plural-dominant (e.g., bean)

• plural-forms• singular-dominant (e.g., cats) • plural-dominant (e.g., beans)

Discussion70

L1 Matching


• plural forms• singular-dominant (e.g., cats) • plural-dominant (e.g., beans)

Discussion71

L1 Matching

No significant difference


• Frequency effects• if plural-dominant plurals are processed faster

than singular-dominant plurals…• if singular-dominant singulars are processed

faster than plural dominant singulars…-> frequency effects

• However, this was not the case in L1 matching condition.

• Both plurals were processed through morphological decomposition

Discussion72

L1 Matching

• singular-dominant• singular form (e.g., cat) • plural form (e.g., cats)

• plural-dominant• singular form (e.g., bean)• plural form (e.g., beans)

Discussion73

Picture Matching

• singular-dominant• singular form (e.g., cat)• plural form (e.g., cats)

• plural-dominant• singular form (e.g., bean)• plural form (e.g., beans) -> faster

Discussion74

Picture Matching

-> No significant difference


• plural forms• singular-dominant (e.g., cats) • plural-dominant (e.g., beans)

Discussion75

Picture Matching


• plural forms• singular-dominant (e.g., cats) • plural dominant (e.g., beans) -> faster

Discussion76

Picture Matching


• Frequency Effects• Singular-dominant singulars -> NO• Plural-dominant plurals -> YES

Discussion77

Picture Matching

• L1 matching task• L2 words -> semantic information (L1)• No number information needed to process• Always morphological decomposition

irrespective of frequency• Picture matching

• L2 words -> conceptual information (Picture)• Strong connection between plural-dominant

plurals and plurality may result in making faster processing route to concepts

Discussion78

Assymetrical Frequency Effects?

• Plural-dominant plurals• Picture-matching condition

• frequency effects -> full-form storage?• L1-matching condition

• task effects (L2 -> L1) led the learners to process through morphological decomposition

• Singular-dominant singulars• Picture-matching condition

• no frequency advantage -> enough time for singular-dominant plurals to be decomposed?

Discussion79

Assymetrical Frequency Effects?

• Singular-dominant singulars• Plural-dominant singulars• Plural-dominant plurals• Singular-dominant plurals

Discussion80

Processing Routes

L2L1

Concepts

decomposition

full-form

• Number of test items• Difficulty in controlling base frequency and

frequency dominance• Only concretes items can be used

• Intervals between the recognition of L2 and L1 or Picture

• How can we handle plural forms of abstract nouns?

• What if the picture would have been multilple objects?

Discussion81

Limitations


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• Plurals with high frequency• direct access to concepts• full-form processing

• Singulars with high frequency• no firm evidence of frequency effects• singular is always easy to process irrespective of

frequency?• Future research

• different type of nouns• not only reception but production

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Frequency and Plurality

Conclusion

Baayen, R. H., Lieber, R., & Schreuder, R. (1997). The morphological complexity of simplex nouns. Linguistics, 35, 861–877. doi:10.1515/ling.1997.35.5.861

Baayen, R., Levelt, W., Schreuder, R., & Ernestus, M. (2007). Paradigmatic structure in speech production. Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 43, 1–29. Retrieved from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cls/pcls/2007/00000043/00000001/art00001

Barker, J., & Nicol, J. (2000). Word frequency effects on the processing of subject-verb number agreement. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 29, 99–106. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10723714

Beyersmann, E., Dutton, E. M., Amer, S., Schiller, N. O., & Biedermann, B. (2015). The production of singular- and plural-dominant nouns in Dutch. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 867–876. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1027236

Biedermann, B., Beyersmann, E., Mason, C., & Nickels, L. (2013). Does plural dominance play a role in spoken picture naming? A comparison of unimpaired and impaired speakers. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 26, 712–736. doi:10.1016/j.jneuroling.2013.05.001

Bock, K., & Miller, C. A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 45–93. doi:10.1016/0010-0285(91)90003-7

Eberhard, K. M. (1999). The Accessibility of Conceptual Number to the Processes of Subject–Verb Agreement in English. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 560–578. doi:10.1006/jmla.1999.2662

Habuchi, Y. (2005). Daini gengo gakusyu-sya no tango syori ni oyobosu goi to gainen no rengo-kyodo no eikyo [The effects of associative strength between lexical and conceptual representations on word processing in second language learners]. The Japanese Journal of Psychology, 76,1–9.

Humphreys, K. R., & Bock, K. (2005). Notional number agreement in English. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12, 689–95. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16447383

References85

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Kawakami, A. (1994). Goi-Gainen-kankei ni okeru daini gengo no syujyukudo no eikyo [The effect of proficiency in a second language on lexical-conceptual representation]. The Japanese Journal of Psychology, 64, 426–433.

Kroll, J. F., & De Groot, A. M. (Eds.). (2005). Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches. Oxford University Press.

Kusanagi, K., Tamura, Y., & Fukuta, J. (2015). The notional number attraction in English as a foreign language: A self-paced reading study. Journal of the Japan Society for Speech Sciences, 16, 77–96.

Nakagawa, C. (2009). Examination of the developmental hypothesis on the revised hierarchical model. Annual Review of English Language Education in Japan, 20, 121–130.

New, B., Brysbaert, M., Segui, J., Ferrand, L., & Rastle, K. (2004). The processing of singular and plural nouns in French and English. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 568–585.

Sereno, J. A., & Jongman, A. (1997). Processing of English inflectional morphology. Memory & Cognition, 25, 425–437. doi:10.3758/BF03201119

Stemberger, J. P., & MacWhinney, B. (1986). Frequency and the lexical storage of regularly inflected forms. Memory & Cognition, 14, 17–26. doi:10.3758/BF03209225

Taft, M. (2004). Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. A, Human Experimental Psychology, 57, 745–765.

Vigliocco, G., Butterworth, B., & Semenza, C. (1995). Constructing Subject-verb agreement in speech: The role of semantic and morphological factors. Journal of Memory and Language, 34, 186–215. doi:10.1006/jmla.1995.1009

Vigliocco, G., Hartsuiker, R. J., & Kolk, H. H. J. (1996). One or More Labels on the Bottles ? Notional Concord in Dutch and French. Language and Cognitive Processes, 11, 407–442.

Yamashita, J. (2007). Investigating asymmetry in EFL Learners’ mental lexicon: Connections between lexical and Conceptual representations in Ll and L2. JACET Journal, 45, 63–79.

References86

Word Frequency Effects and Plurality in L2 Word Recognition–A Preliminary Study–

contact info Yu TamuraGraduate School, Nagoya [email protected]

http://www.tamurayu.wordpress.com/

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Picture-matching

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mailto:[email protected]

http://www.tamurayu.wordpress.com

Results88

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Mean Raw RT Plot (N = 32)

Word Frequency Effects and Plurality in L2 Word Recognition—A Preliminary Study—

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