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This paper examines L2 processing of derivational morphology in English. Derivational morphology in English is known to differ from inflectional morphology, in that unlike the latter whose well-known example is regular and irregular verbal morphology, the former varies in light of regularity. That is, derivational morphology does not display a categorical, regular and irregular distinction, but involves semantic and phonological/phonetic factors in shaping its various word structures. We focus on these aspects of derivational morphology to examine how Korean L2 learners of English comprehend semantic and phonological factors in processing derivational morphology. We use the event-related potentials (ERPs) paradigm to capture the finer-grained time course of processing it. It is shown in this paper that L2 learners of English start with processing both simple and derivationally complex words on the phonological level, as can be seen from the finding that only phonological/phonetic priming effects arise in the early N400 time window (324-400ms). But at the immediately following stage of processing they engage in processing derivationally complex words on the semantic level, as can be seen from the finding that only semantic priming effects arise in the late time interval (400-476ms). Since for L1 native speakers this semantic processing in fact starts in the early N400 time window, L2 learners of English are taken to be a little slower than L1 native speakers in processing derivationally complex words. Furthermore, unlike L1 native speakers, the L2 learners are found to have difficulty in understanding cumulative features of semantic and phonological/phonetic properties in processing morphologically related words.
