Abstract
Two opposing views exist on the structure of the mental lexicon and the usage of the regular and irregular inflection. According to the first one, all inflected forms are stored in the lexicon (Seidenberg/Joanisse 2005). The opposing view (Pinker/Ullman 2002) holds that regular forms are inflected by the application of morphological rules. Longitudinal data from four children are examined in the present study. The children were first exposed to German as their second language in the early childhood. The predictions of both models of the mental lexicon are investigated in the collected data. The results show that the use of past participles by children acquiring German as their early second language can provide some insights into the structure of the mental lexicon. However, the effect of age at which learners are first exposed to their second language has to be taken into account.
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