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Title Processing of Morphologically Complex Words in Urdu and English by Urdu English Bilinguals: A Psycholinguistic Stud

Author(s) Ahmar Jahanzeb

Abstract The study investigates the processing of morphologically complex words in Urdu (L1) and English (L2). The theoretical background of the study is based on the dual mechanism theory (Pinker & Ullman, 2002) which posits that L1 users decompose the morphologically complex words before storing them in their mental lexicons whereas the morphological decomposition is not available for L2 users in the early stages of L2 learning. Thirty-nine Urdu-English bilinguals took part in two similar lexical decision-making experiments. These participants were divided into three groups according to their proficiency levels based on their scores in the LexTALE test. Two very similar masked priming experiments of Urdu and English wereused inthestudy. In boththeexperiments,primes wereshowntotheparticipants for 50 milliseconds before asking the participants to respond to the target words in a lexical decision-making task. The experiments included inflections, derivations, and compound words of Urdu and English. The English experiment also included items containing words that were only orthographically related. The data was analyzed via the MANOVA in the SPSS. The results showed across the board priming effects for the Urdu experiment. In English, however, only high proficiency group displayed priming effects in inflections, derivations, and one of the three compound words. No primingwasobservedfortheorthographicallyrelatedprimesandtargets.Thefindings suggest that the native speakers of a language break down the morphologically complex words. The second language learners, however, achieve the native-like processing only after attaining higher levels of proficiency in the second language. The study is significant as it focuses on bilingual minds investigating the similarities anddifferencesbetweenL1andL2processing.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2024-04-03

Subject PhD English Linguistics

Publisher Department of English (GS)

Contributor(s) Dr. Aneela Gill

Format As per departmental guidelines

Identifier Dr. Muhammad Haseeb Nasir (PhD English Program Coordinator)

Source PhD

Relation

Coverage

Rights