Morphological schemas

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ray Jackendoff ◽  
Jenny Audring
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Access ◽  
Direct Contact ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Standard Notion ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Experimental Findings ◽  
Lexical Relations

We propose a theory of the lexicon in which rules of grammar, encoded as declarative schemas, are lexical items containing variables. We develop a notation to encode precise relations among lexical items and show how this differs from the standard notion of inheritance. We also show how schemas can play both a generative role, acting as productive rules, and also a relational role, where they codify nonproductive but nevertheless prolific patterns within the lexicon. We then show how this theory of lexical relations can be embedded directly into a theory of lexical access and lexical processing, such that it can make direct contact with experimental findings.

scholarly journals German in childhood and Latin in adolescence: On the bidialectal nature of lexical access in English

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo E Hernandez ◽  
Juliana Ronderos ◽  
Tres Bodet ◽  
Hannah Claussenius-Kalman ◽  
Ferenc Bunta
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Diverse Backgrounds ◽  
Lexical Items

The nature of word etymology, long a topic of interest in linguistics, has been considered to a much lesser extent in the word recognition literature. The present study created a database of overlapping words from the English Lexicon Project and a database with age of acquisition (AoA) norms which were categorized as either Germanic or Latin-based. Results revealed that Germanic words were learned earlier than Latin-based words. Germanic words also showed lower reaction times and higher accuracy relative to Latin-based words even when controlling for AoA, word frequency and length. The findings support a bidialectal view of English in that Germanic words serve as the base of lexical processing during childhood, whereas Latin-based words fill in the lexical space across adolescence and into early adulthood. These results carry implications for theories of word recognition and the processing of lexical items in populations that come from linguistically diverse backgrounds.

scholarly journals The use and nature of grapheme coding during sub-lexical processing and lexical access

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (6) ◽  
pp. 1324-1339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Commissaire ◽  
Séverine Casalis
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Access ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Stimulus Onset ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Single Letter ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Letter Detection ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Lexical Route

This work aimed to investigate grapheme coding during sub-lexical processing and lexical access. Using the letter detection task in Experiment 1, we compared letter pairs that could be considered as a grapheme unit or not depending on context (referred to as weakly cohesive complex, e.g., an in chant vs cane) to real two-letter graphemes (highly cohesive complex, e.g., au in chaud) and single-letter graphemes (simple, e.g., a in place). Three experimental conditions were used, one of which was designed to prevent phonological influences. Data revealed that only highly cohesive complex graphemes were processed as units, not the weakly cohesive ones. The same pattern was found across experimental conditions in favor of an orthographic mechanism. In Experiments 2 and 3, a primed lexical decision task was used with two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) and two different ranges of lexical frequency. We manipulated the number of graphemes removed from partial primes ( d**che vs do**he-DOUCHE) and relatedness. In contrast to Experiment 1, no evidence was provided in favor of a role of graphemes during lexical access. We suggest that graphemes can be conceived as sub-lexical orthographic units per se but can only be captured within a sub-lexical route to reading.

The influence of grammatical gender and suffix transparency in processing Italian written nouns

2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria De Martino ◽  
Giulia Bracco ◽  
Francesca Postiglione ◽  
Alessandro Laudanna
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Grammatical Gender ◽  
Surface Form ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Default Option ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Better Than

Abstract In some languages the grammatical gender of nouns can be probabilistically detected using formal cues; for instance, in Italian, the majority of feminine nouns end in ‘-a’(e.g., casa, ‘home’) and the majority of masculine nouns end in ‘-o’ (e.g., albero, ‘tree’). It has been hypothesized that the match/mismatch between the formal information of the suffix and the abstract grammatical information on gender affects lexical processing of nouns. An alternative account is that a default option available for gender poses constraints to mechanisms of lexical access for words exhibiting gender markers in the surface form. In the present study, nouns with highly predictive gender suffix (regular), nouns whose gender cannot be recovered from surface form (opaque) and nouns with misleading gender suffix (irregular) were compared in two reading aloud and two lexical decision experiments. Results confirmed that regular nouns are processed better than irregular nouns. No difference was detected between masculine and feminine opaque nouns. The results allow the conclusion that a formal gender feature (the gender orthographic regularity) is more likely to affect lexical processing of bare nouns than the activation of a gender default option.

Is second language lexical access prosodically constrained? Processing of word stress by French Canadian second language learners of English

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNIE TREMBLAY
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Canadian French ◽  
Primary Stress ◽  
Word Stress ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Stress Placement

ABSTRACTThe objectives of this study are (a) to determine if native speakers of Canadian French at different English proficiencies can use primary stress for recognizing English words and (b) to specify how the second language (L2) learners' (surface-level) knowledge of L2 stress placement influences their use of primary stress in L2 word recognition. Two experiments were conducted: a cross-modal word-identification task investigating (a) and a vocabulary production task investigating (b). The results show that several L2 learners can use primary stress for recognizing English words, but only the L2 learners with targetlike knowledge of stress placement can do so. The results also indicate that knowing where primary stress falls in English words is not sufficient for L2 learners to be able to use stress for L2 lexical access. This suggests that the problem that L2 word stress poses for many native speakers of (Canadian) French is at the level of lexical processing.

Change in lexical retrieval skills in adulthood

2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mira Goral ◽  
Avron Spiro III ◽  
Martin L. Albert ◽  
Loraine K. Obler ◽  
Lisa Tabor Connor
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Random Effect ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Boston Naming Test ◽  
Older Adulthood ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Action Naming ◽  
Lexical Items ◽  
Naming Test

We conducted multivariate random-effect analyses on longitudinal data from 238 adults, ranging in age from 30 to 94, who were tested on five lexical tests over a period of 20 years to examine (a) the relations between lemma and lexeme retrieval as manifested in different tests of lexical retrieval and (b) changes in lexical processing during older adulthood. This study documents differing profiles of age-related decline in lexical retrieval determined by task demand, gender, education, and underlying cognitive skills. The tasks that required retrieval of unique lexical items (Boston Naming Test and Action Naming Test) yielded significant age-related decline that became more rapid in older age, distinguishing them from tasks that allowed for the retrieval of various lexical items. Findings support a cascaded progression of lemma and lexeme retrieval during word production.

Audiovisual vowel monitoring and the word superiority effect in children

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 457-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathilde Fort ◽  
Elsa Spinelli ◽  
Christophe Savariaux ◽  
Sonia Kandel
Keyword(s):  
White Noise ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Acoustic Signal ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Visual Speech ◽  
Word Superiority Effect ◽  
Superiority Effect ◽  
Noise Masking ◽  
Monitoring Task

The goal of this study was to explore whether viewing the speaker’s articulatory gestures contributes to lexical access in children (ages 5–10) and in adults. We conducted a vowel monitoring task with words and pseudo-words in audio-only (AO) and audiovisual (AV) contexts with white noise masking the acoustic signal. The results indicated that children clearly benefited from visual speech from age 6–7 onwards. However, unlike adults, the word superiority effect was not greater in the AV than the AO condition in children, suggesting that visual speech mostly contributes to phonemic—rather than lexical—processing during childhood, at least until the age of 10.

Electrifying the lexical decision

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 339-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Azevedo ◽  
Ruth Ann Atchley ◽  
Eva Kehayia
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Status ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Four Blocks

The current research utilizes lexical decision within an oddball ERP paradigm to study early lexical processing. Nineteen undergraduate students completed four blocks of the oddball lexical decision task (Nonword targets among Words, Word targets among Nonwords, Word targets among Pseudowords, and Pseudoword targets among Words). We observed a reliable P3 ERP component in conditions where the distinction between rare and frequent trials could be made solely based on lexical status (Words among Nonwords and Nonwords among Words). We saw a reliable P3 to rare words among frequent pseudowords, but no P3 was observed when participants were asked to detect pseudowords in the context of frequent word stimuli. We argue that this observed modulation of the P3 results is consistent with psycholinguistic literature that suggests that two criteria are available during lexical access when performing a lexicality judgement, a non-lexical criterion that relies on global activation at the word level and a lexical criterion that relies on activation of a lexical representation (Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, & Ziegler, 2001; Grainger & Jacobs, 1996).

Lexikalischer Zugriff bei Mehrsprachigen: Eine Studie zur visuellen Verarbeitung von Kognaten im Polnischen als Erstsprache

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-60
Author(s):  
Kamil Długosz
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Decision ◽  
Lexical Decision Task ◽  
Lexical Access ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Facilitation Effect ◽  
L3 Acquisition

Summary Research into cross-linguistic influence in L3 acquisition and processing has recently shown remarkable growth. However, still little is known about reverse interactions, i. e. the effects of L2 and L3 on L1. This study investigates visual cognate processing in Polish to determine whether lexical access in the dominant L1 is susceptible to the influence of the non-dominant L2 and L3. A group of 13 Polish learners of German and English participated in a lexical decision task in which both double and triple cognates were examined in comparison to control non-cognates and non-words. In line with the pattern found in most similar studies, the results reveal no cognate facilitation effect, thus indicating that L1 lexical access in multilinguals may also be selective with respect to L2 and L3. The theoretical consequences for L1 lexical processing in the multilingual mind are discussed.

scholarly journals Fuzzy Lexical Representations in Adult Second Language Speakers

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kira Gor ◽  
Svetlana Cook ◽  
Denisa Bordag ◽  
Anna Chrabaszcz ◽  
Andreas Opitz
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Access ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Input Frequency ◽  
Main Claim ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Storage And Retrieval ◽  
Second Language Speakers ◽  
Core Property ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
Word Forms

We propose the fuzzy lexical representations (FLRs) hypothesis that regards fuzziness as a core property of nonnative (L2) lexical representations (LRs). Fuzziness refers to imprecise encoding at different levels of LRs and interacts with input frequency during lexical processing and learning in adult L2 speakers. The FLR hypothesis primarily focuses on the encoding of spoken L2 words. We discuss the causes of fuzzy encoding of phonological form and meaning as well as fuzzy form-meaning mappings and the consequences of fuzzy encoding for word storage and retrieval. A central factor contributing to the fuzziness of L2 LRs is the fact that the L2 lexicon is acquired when the L1 lexicon is already in place. There are two immediate consequences of such sequential learning. First, L2 phonological categorization difficulties lead to fuzzy phonological form encoding. Second, the acquisition of L2 word forms subsequently to their meanings, which had already been acquired together with the L1 word forms, leads to weak L2 form-meaning mappings. The FLR hypothesis accounts for a range of phenomena observed in L2 lexical processing, including lexical confusions, slow lexical access, retrieval of incorrect lexical entries, weak lexical competition, reliance on sublexical rather than lexical heuristics in word recognition, the precedence of word form over meaning, and the prominence of detailed, even if imprecisely encoded, information about LRs in episodic memory. The main claim of the FLR hypothesis – that the quality of lexical encoding is a product of a complex interplay between fuzziness and input frequency – can contribute to increasing the efficiency of the existing models of LRs and lexical access.

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