Stress properties of Greek compounds: Psycholinguistic considerations

Author(s):  
Athanasios Tsiamas ◽  
Gonia Jarema ◽  
Eva Kehayia ◽  
Gevorg Chilingaryan

AbstractTheoretical accounts of Greek compounds argue for a close relation between their stress properties and their underlying structure. Compounds that preserve and receive stress at the same position as their second constituent are analyzed as stem-word constructions, while those that receive antepenultimate stress are viewed as belonging to the stem-stem category. Using an auditory lexical decision task, we examine the effect of stress change on the processing of compounds in the light of existing theoretical linguistic accounts. Although our experimental results do not reach statistical significance, we believe that they are informative of the cognitive status and role of stress in compound processing. Finally, they relate to existing theories of compounding in Greek and reflect the complex interaction of the psycholinguistic effects of stress and the structural properties of these constructions.

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-164
Author(s):  
Arne Lohmann ◽  
Benjamin V. Tucker

Abstract This article reports the results of an auditory lexical decision task, testing the processing of phonetic detail of English noun/verb conversion pairs. The article builds on recent findings showing that the frequent occurrence in certain prosodic environments may lead to the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail as part of the lexical representation. To investigate this question with noun/verb conversion pairs, ambicategorical stimuli were used that exhibit systematic occurrence differences with regard to prosodic environment, as indicated by either a strong verb-bias, e.g., talk (N/V) or a strong noun-bias, e.g., voice (N/V). The auditory lexical decision task tests whether acoustic properties reflecting either the typical or the atypical prosodic environment impact the processing of recordings of the stimuli. In doing so assumptions about the storage of prosody-induced phonetic detail are tested that distinguish competing model architectures. The results are most straightforwardly accounted for within an abstractionist architecture, in which the acoustic signal is mapped onto a representation that is based on the canonical pronunciation of the word.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Lockwood ◽  
Abigail Millings ◽  
Erica Hepper ◽  
Angela C. Rowe

Crying is a powerful solicitation of caregiving, yet little is known about the cognitive processes underpinning caring responses to crying others. This study examined (1) whether crying (compared to sad and happy) faces differentially elicited semantic activation of caregiving, and (2) whether individual differences in cognitive and emotional empathy moderated this activation. Ninety participants completed a lexical decision task in which caregiving, neutral, and nonwords were presented after subliminal exposure (24 ms) to crying, sad, and happy faces. Individuals low in cognitive empathy had slower reaction times to caregiving (vs. neutral) words after exposure to crying faces, but not after sad or happy faces. Results are discussed with respect to the role of empathy in response to crying others.


2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
MADS POULSEN

ABSTRACTWord production difficulties are well documented in dyslexia, whereas the results are mixed for receptive phonological processing. This asymmetry raises the possibility that the core phonological deficit of dyslexia is restricted to output processing stages. The present study investigated whether a group of dyslexics had word level receptive difficulties using an auditory lexical decision task with long words and nonsense words. The dyslexics were slower and less accurate than chronological age controls in an auditory lexical decision task, with disproportionate low performance on nonsense words. The finding suggests that input processing difficulties are associated with the phonological deficit, but that these difficulties may be stronger above the level of phoneme perception.


2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara J. Unsworth ◽  
Penny M. Pexman

There has been much debate about the role of phonology in reading. This debate has been fuelled, in part, by mixed findings for phonological effects in lexical decision tasks. In the present research we investigated the impact of reader skill on three phonological effects (homophone, homograph, and regularity effects) in a lexical decision task and in a phonological lexical decision task. In both tasks, the more skilled readers showed different patterns of phonological effects from those of the less skilled readers; in particular, less skilled readers showed regularity effects in both tasks whereas more skilled readers did not. We concluded that more skilled readers activate phonology in these tasks but do so more efficiently, with less spurious phonological activation.


1982 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila E. Blumstein ◽  
William Milberg ◽  
Robin Shrier

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