Bilinguals reading compound words like "fundraiser"

What is it about?

Languages create words by combining other words, like in fund+raiser. On a theoretical level, the question is whether such compound words are read by analysing their parts or as a whole new word. In addition, different languages form new words in different ways and when someone is learning a new language, such discrepancies between first and second language may cause difficulties. Here we show that native speakers of Spanish when they read compound words in their second language English, they analyze them into their parts, just as native English speakers do.

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Why is it important?

This investigation shows that second language speakers of medium-high proficiency can attain native-like processing when reading compound words like "fundraiser".