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- Volume 14, Issue 1, 2019
The Mental Lexicon - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2019
Volume 14, Issue 1, 2019
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Spelling errors in English derivational suffixes reflect morphological boundary strength
Author(s): Susanne Gahl and Ingo Plagpp.: 1–36 (36)More LessAbstractTo what extent do speakers decompose morphologically complex words, such as segmentable, into their morphological constituents? In this article, we argue that spelling errors in English affixes reflect morphological boundary strength and degrees of segmentability. In support of this argument, we present a case study examining the spelling of the suffixes -able/-ible, -ence/-ance, and -ment in an online resource (Tweets), in forms such as
, , , and . Based on previous research on morphological productivity and boundary strength (Hay, 2002; Hay & Baayen, 2002, 2005), we hypothesized that morphological segmentability should affect the choice between vs. , vs. , and vs. <-mint>. An analysis of roughly 23,000 non-standard spellings is consistent with that hypothesis, underscoring the usefulness of spelling variation as a source of evidence for morphological segmentability and for the role of morphological representations in language production and comprehension.
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Morphological sensitivity generalizes across modalities
Author(s): Chen Gafni, Maya Yablonski and Michal Ben-Shacharpp.: 37–67 (31)More LessAbstractA growing body of psycholinguistic research suggests that visual and auditory word recognition involve morphological decomposition: Individual morphemes are extracted and lexically accessed when participants are presented with multi-morphemic stimuli. This view is supported by the Morpheme Interference Effect (MIE), where responses to pseudowords that contain real morphemes are slower and less accurate than responses to pseudowords that contain invented morphemes. The MIE was previously demonstrated primarily for visually presented stimuli. Here, we examine whether individuals’ sensitivity to morphological structure generalizes across modalities. Participants performed a lexical decision task on visually and auditorily presented Hebrew stimuli, including pseudowords derived from real or invented roots. The results show robust MIEs in both modalities. We further show that visual MIE is consistently stronger than auditory MIE, both at the group level and at the individual level. Finally, the data show a significant correlation between visual and auditory MIEs at the individual level. These findings suggest that the MIE reflects a general sensitivity to morphological structure, which varies considerably across individuals, but is largely consistent across modalities within individuals. Thus, we propose that the MIE captures an important aspect of language processing, rather than a property specific to visual word recognition.
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Phonological and grammatical class cohorts in word production
Author(s): Pauline Pellet Cheneval and Marina Laganaropp.: 68–97 (30)More LessAbstractThe lexical or sub-lexical loci of facilitation of word production by phonological cueing/priming are debated. We investigate whether phonological cues facilitate word production at the level of lexical selection by manipulating the size of the cohort of word onsets matching the cue. In the framework of lexical facilitation, a phonological cue corresponding to a small number of words should be more effective than a cue corresponding to a larger cohort. However, a lexical locus can clearly be inferred only if the facilitation effect in picture naming is modulated by a specific grammatical lexical cohort and not by the overall word onset cohort. Twenty-seven healthy participants performed an object/noun (Exp1) and an action/verb (Exp2) naming task with cues corresponding to large/small noun/verb onset cohorts. Results revealed that facilitation was modulated by the lexical onset cohort size of the cue in the target grammatical category. These results favour the lexical hypothesis and further suggest a categorical organization of the lexicon.
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Neural correlates of second language acquisition of tone-grammar associations
Author(s): Anna Hed, Andrea Schremm, Merle Horne and Mikael Rollpp.: 98–123 (26)More LessAbstractNative speakers of Swedish use tones on stems to predict which suffix is to follow. This is seen behaviorally in reduced response times for matching tone-suffix pairs. Neurophysiologically, online prediction is reflected in the event-related potential (ERP) component pre-activation negativity (PrAN) occurring for tones with a higher predictive value. Invalid suffixes relative to the tone produce a left anterior negativity (LAN), or a broadly distributed negativity, and a P600. When native speakers make decisions about the inflection of words, response times are also longer for invalid tone-suffix combinations. In this study, low to intermediate level second language learners with non-tonal native languages trained tone-suffix associations for two weeks. Before and after training, they participated in a perception test where they listened to nouns with valid and invalid tone-suffix combinations and performed a singular/plural judgment task. During the test, electroencephalography (EEG) and response times were measured. After training, the PrAN effect increased, and a LAN emerged for invalid stimuli, indicating that the participants had acquired the tone-suffix association, using the tones as predictors more extensively post-training. However, neither a P600 nor longer response times for invalidity were found, suggesting potential differences in native and second language processing of the tone-suffix association.
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It’s hard to be talented
Author(s): Marcus Taft and Sonny Lipp.: 124–151 (28)More LessAbstractIn a visual lexical decision task, recognition is shown in two experiments to be harder for possessional adjectives that look like they are inflected verbs (e.g., talented) than for genuine inflected verbs (e.g., consulted), especially when the nonword distractors have real-word stems (e.g., infanted). Such a result implies that inflected words do not have a form-based whole word representation, but are recognized when functional information associated with their stem and affix is recombined after decomposition. A third experiment goes on to demonstrate that the addition of the verb suffix -ing to the noun stem of such pseudo-verb-stem words (i.e., talenting) leads to more erroneous classifications as a real word than when the stem is another type of noun (e.g., infanting). Moreover, a negative correlation is observed between the accuracy of recognition of the pseudo-verb-stem words and the classification as a nonword of the -ing version of their stems. On the basis of these experiments, a model is proposed in which a pseudo-verb-stem word is recognized through a lexical representation of its stem that corresponds to a bound ornative verb and which is different to the representation used to recognize its free-standing noun version.
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No lab, no problem
Author(s): Jordan Gallant and Gary Libbenpp.: 152–168 (17)More LessAbstractWe present new opportunities for psycholinguistic research that are made available by presenting experiments online over the web. We focus on PsychoPy3, which is a new version of a system for the development and delivery of behavioural experiments. Crucially, it allows for both these functions to be performed online. We note that experiments delivered over the web have significant efficiency advantages. They also open up new opportunities to increase the ecological validity of experiments and to facilitate the participation of members of populations that have thus far been less studied in the psycholinguistic literature. We discuss the crucial matter of millisecond timing in online experiments. The technical details of implementation of a behavioural psycholinguistic experiment are presented, along with listings of additional technical resources and support. Our overall evaluation is that although online experimentation still has technical challenges and improvements are ongoing, it may well represent the future of behavioural psycholinguistic research.
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