Table 1
Characteristics of participants.
| CEFR LEVELS | NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS | MEAN AGE (SD)5 | FIRST LANGUAGE | MEAN YEARS OF EXPERIENCE WITH ITALIAN (SD) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beginners | A1–A2 | 28 | 39.5(19.7) | Flemish | 1 (0.17) |
| Intermediate | B1–B2 | 35 | 33.1(17.3) | Flemish | 3.93 (2.2) |
| Advanced | C1–C2 | 32 | 35.5(21.8) | Flemish | 7.94 (5.16) |
| L1 | Native speakers | 51 | 22.7(4.5) | Italian |
Table 2
Characteristics of the items included in the experiment. Each variable is accompanied by its average, standard deviation, and range (in brackets). In this table, we opted to use the term “Base” instead of “Stem” since the Italian words used as (pseudo)stems were not free-standing stems. Instead, we provide frequency and family size for the bound form that includes the inflectional affix (e.g., calza, Eng. sock, is formed by the root calz- and the inflectional affix -a, denoting singular feminine; this is considered the base form of the word). Item and base frequency values were obtained from Subtlex-IT (Crepaldi et al., 2015), and for both measures, we present Zipf transformed frequencies (Brysbaert et al., 2018). Suffix frequency, base family size, and suffix family size were calculated based on Subtlex-IT, considering all words with a frequency higher than 1. The complete itemset, including all measurements, as well as the script used for computation, can be found at: https://osf.io/mpfdy/?view_only=7bc2f6e47e4c4cd98e4065c475f901fd.
| TYPE | EXAMPLE | STEM | SUFFIX | ITEM LENGTH | ITEM FREQUENCY | BASE FREQUENCY | SUFFIX FREQUENCY | BASE FAMILY SIZE | SUFFIX FAMILY SIZE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real Suffix | Tencapabile | *** | -abile(-able) | 10.02(1.41; 7–13) | NA | NA | 5.48(0.73; 3.83–6.41) | NA | 529.88(415.77; 30–1675) |
| Real Stem | Calzeccia | Calz-(Sock) | *** | 7.40(1.14; 6–11) | NA | 4.6(0.72; 2.8–6.36) | NA | 443.22(613.26; 12–2573) | NA |
| Novel Derivation | Stelloso (Starful) | Stell-(Star) | -oso(-ous) | 9.80(1.56; 7–14) | NA | 4.22(0.73; 2.25–5.31) | 5.46(0.73; 3.83–6.41) | 140.68(233.14; 2–1344) | 536.36(412.47; 30–1675) |
| Complex Word | Amabile(Lovable) | Am-(Love) | -abile(-able) | 9.98(1.85; 6–14) | 3.37(1.08; 1–5.07) | 4.245(0.88; 2.19–6.36) | 5.46(0.71 3.83–6.41) | 526.40(2175.45; 3–15468) | 514.88(414; 30–1675) |
| Simple Word | Freccia(Arrow) | *** | *** | 6.36(1.52; 4–10) | 3.6(0.9; 1.2–6) | 3.6(0.9; 1.2–6) | NA | 171.54(462.4; 2–2740) | NA |
Figure 1
Mean accuracy rates for words (1A – left panel) and pseudo-words (1B – right panel) across word types and proficiency groups. Tables with detailed information is included in Appendix 1.1 and 2.1.
Figure 2
Mean reaction times for accurate rejections of different types of pseudo-words across groups. A table with detailed information is included in Appendix 3.1.