The effects of semantic transparency and base frequency on the recognition of English complex words.

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 904-910 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe Xu ◽  
Marcus Taft
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Base Frequency ◽  
Complex Words

Morphological Units: A Theoretical and Psycholinguistic Perspective

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominiek Sandra
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Semantic Relations ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Relational Information ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Processing Level ◽  
Communicative Efficiency ◽  
Complex Words

Speakers can transfer meanings to each other because they represent them in a perceptible form. Phonology and syntactic structure are two levels of linguistic form. Morphemes are situated in-between them. Like phonemes they have a phonological component, and like syntactic structures they carry relational information. A distinction can be made between inflectional and lexical morphology. Both are devices in the service of communicative efficiency, by highlighting grammatical and semantic relations, respectively. Morphological structure has also been studied in psycholinguistics, especially by researchers who are interested in the process of visual word recognition. They found that a word is recognized more easily when it belongs to a large morphological family, which suggests that the mental lexicon is structured along morphological lines. The semantic transparency of a word’s morphological structure plays an important role. Several findings also suggest that morphology plays an important role at a pre-lexical processing level as well. It seems that morphologically complex words are subjected to a process of blind morphological decomposition before lexical access is attempted.

Semantic transparency affects morphological priming . . . eventually

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1112-1124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Heyer ◽  
Dana Kornishova
Keyword(s):  
Time Course ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Morphological Priming ◽  
Complex Words

Semantic transparency has been in the focus of psycholinguistic research for decades, with the controversy about the time course of the application of morpho-semantic information during the processing of morphologically complex words not yet resolved. This study reports two masked priming studies with English - ness and Russian - ost’ nominalisations, investigating how semantic transparency modulates native speakers’ morphological priming effects at short and long stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). In both languages, we found increased morphological priming for nominalisations at the transparent end of the scale (e.g. paleness – pale) in comparison to items at the opaque end of the scale (e.g. business – busy) but only at longer prime durations. The present findings are in line with models that posit an initial phase of morpho-orthographic (semantically blind) decomposition.

scholarly journals Is a Step through the Door a Way to Take a Doorstep? A Psycholinguistic Study on Polish Compound Words

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 205-230
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Hwaszcz
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Morphological Processing ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Compound Words ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Test Current

The present study concentrates on the organization of the mental lexicon with regard to semantic transparency in the representation of Polish compounds. Its aim was to test current approaches to the processing of morphologically complex words in a lexical decision experiment with the use of visually presented Polish compound and simple words. The existing psycholinguistic approaches centre around the same question: are complex words parsed into their constituent parts or are they stored as full-word representations in the human mental lexicon? I referred to five widely acknowledged models of morphological processing to account for the outcomes of the present study. The data reveal that: i transparent compounds primed by words semantically related to the heads of these transparent compounds elicited faster response times than opaque compounds within the same condition; and ii priming speeds up the processing for both transparent and opaque compounds. The results indicate that the processing of Polish compound words is influenced by semantic transparency and that both transparent and opaque compounds are decomposed into their constituents prior to lexical access.

scholarly journals Dissociating Morpheme Form and Meaning: Evidence for Morphological Decomposition of Compound Words during Reading

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teon L Brooks ◽  
Peter C. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Eye Movement ◽  
Reading Time ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Prime Word ◽  
Compound Words ◽  
First Pass ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Prior Processing

Compound words have two free morphemes whose individual meanings can have a transparent (e.g., roadside) or opaque (e.g., butterfly) relationship to the overall meaning. It is unclear when meaning is accessed during lexical processing of compounds (and other morphologically complex words), with conflicting results from priming in lexical-decision studies and from reading-time studies that examine how the characteristics of a compound affect its processing. The present studies examined eye-movement measures on target words in a sentence as a function of their relation in form and meaning to a prime word that occurred earlier in the sentence. In Experiment 1 the primes were transparent or opaque compounds and the targets were the first constituent of the compound (e.g., doll preceded by dollhouse vs. container; and brief preceded by briefcase vs. portfolio). First-pass measures showed that target-word recognition was facilitated by prior processing of the compound but that the amount of facilitation was not affected by semantic transparency, a pattern that suggests that there is a stage of processing where compounds are decomposed into their constituent morphemes regardless of their composite meaning. Experiment 2 used first constituents as primes and compounds as targets. First-pass measures showed priming on recognition of both transparent and opaque compounds. Priming facilitation persisted on later measures of lexical processing for transparent compounds but became inhibitory for opaque compounds. These results show that compounds are initially decomposed into their constituent words independently of meaning, but that later in processing activation of the meaning of a constituent word facilitates comprehension of semantically consistent compounds but competes with comprehension of semantically inconsistent compounds.

The Effects of Base Frequency and Affix Productivity in Spanish

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 505-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Lázaro López-Villaseñor
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Morphological Processing ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Base Frequency ◽  
Pair Comparisons ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Main Effects ◽  
First Time ◽  
Pair Analysis ◽  
Morphological Representation

In this study we present the results of a lexical decision experiment where the variables manipulated are Base frequency and Affix productivity. The results show significant main effects for both variables for the first time in Spanish, as well as for the interaction between the two. However, pair analysis shows that the Base Frequency effect is not significant when the Affix Productivity is low, while the Affix Productivity effect is produced regardless of the Base Frequency. The results for the main effects show a morphological representation in the lexicon, whilst the results of pair comparisons suggest a different representation of stems and affixes in the lexicon. These results support the idea that complex words incorporating unproductive affixes are processed differently from words incorporating productive affixes. The results are finally explained in terms of a hierarchical model of morphological processing.

The impact of semantic transparency of morphologically complex words on picture naming

2004 ◽  
Vol 90 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 203-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Dohmes ◽  
Pienie Zwitserlood ◽  
Jens Bölte
Keyword(s):  
Picture Naming ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals Neurobiological Systems for Lexical Representation and Analysis in English

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 1678-1691 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirjana Bozic ◽  
Lorraine K. Tyler ◽  
Li Su ◽  
Cai Wingfield ◽  
William D. Marslen-Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Language Comprehension ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Multivariate Analyses ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
The Brain

Current research suggests that language comprehension engages two joint but functionally distinguishable neurobiological processes: a distributed bilateral system, which supports general perceptual and interpretative processes underpinning speech comprehension, and a left hemisphere (LH) frontotemporal system, selectively tuned to the processing of combinatorial grammatical sequences, such as regularly inflected verbs in English [Marslen-Wilson, W. D., & Tyler, L. K. Morphology, language and the brain: The decompositional substrate for language comprehension. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 362, 823–836, 2007]. Here we investigated how English derivationally complex words engage these systems, asking whether they selectively activate the LH system in the same way as inflections or whether they primarily engage the bilateral system that support nondecompositional access. In an fMRI study, we saw no evidence for selective activation of the LH frontotemporal system, even for highly transparent forms like bravely. Instead, a combination of univariate and multivariate analyses revealed the engagement of a distributed bilateral system, modulated by factors of perceptual complexity and semantic transparency. We discuss the implications for theories of the processing and representation of English derivational morphology and highlight the importance of neurobiological constraints in understanding these processes.

scholarly journals The lifespan of lexical traces for novel morphologically complex words

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura de Vaan ◽  
Mirjam Ernestus ◽  
Robert Schreuder
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Base Frequency ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Visual Lexical Decision

This study investigates the lifespans of lexical traces for novel morphologically complex words. In two visual lexical decision experiments, a neologism was either primed by itself or by its stem. The target occurred 40 trials after the prime (Experiments 1 & 2), after a 12 hour delay (Experiment 1), or after a one week delay (Experiment 2). Participants recognized neologisms more quickly if they had seen them before in the experiment. These results show that memory traces for novel morphologically complex words already come into existence after a very first exposure and that they last for at least a week. We did not find evidence for a role of sleep in the formation of memory traces. Interestingly, Base Frequency appeared to play a role in the processing of the neologisms also when they were presented a second time and had their own memory traces.

Semantic transparency and masked morphological priming: An ERP investigation

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna A. Morris ◽  
Tiffany Frank ◽  
Jonathan Grainger ◽  
Phillip J. Holcomb
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Transparency ◽  
Morphological Priming
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