The Dual-Mechanism Model of language processing (Pinker & Prince, 1988) claims that linguistic representations are based upon a universal language learning mechanism that dissociates between regular, rule-governed and irregular, associative inflectional processes. A number of SLA studies in the past decade have attempted to answer the question whether the Dual-Mechanism Model can be extended to L2 processing by analyzing a number of linguistic structures in L2 users from various L1 backgrounds.

The present study reports on further efforts to investigate this issue with L1 Turkish learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Turkey. Two experiments, a lexical decision task on the English past tense and an elicited production task on English lexical compounds, were run with 22 low-proficiency and 24 high-proficiency L1 Turkish users of EFL.

The results displayed that the dissociation predicted by the Dual-Mechanism Model was evident for both subject groups, indicating that L2 learners indeed employ separate rule-based and association-based processes even in tutored environments. It was also found that this observed dissociation becomes stronger with increasing proficiency because low proficiency L2 subjects appeared to rely more strongly on associative processes. The results are finally discussed in relation to their potential implications for the general structuring of L2 pedagogical practices.