L2 learners treat regular and irregular inflection differently in compounding
Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. Gordon (1985) and Clahsen et al. (1992; 1993) presented data which suggests that children are innately predisposed towards allowing irregular plurals inside compounds (mice-eater) but restricting regular plurals from appearing inside compounds (*rats-eater). Gordon, for example, found that children sometimes produced compounds of the form mice-eater but almost never rats-eater. Gordon (1985) and Clahsen et al. (1992) placed this in the context of a version of