Construction Morphology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geert Booij
Keyword(s):  
Word Processing ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Strong Dependence ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Parallel Architecture ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Intermediate Layers ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Case Markers

Construction Morphology is a theory of word structure in which the complex words of a language are analyzed as constructions, that is, systematic pairings of form and meaning. These pairings are analyzed within a Tripartite Parallel Architecture conception of grammar. This presupposes a word-based approach to the analysis of morphological structure and a strong dependence on paradigmatic relations between words. The lexicon contains both words and the constructional schemas they are instantiations of. Words and schemas are organized in a hierarchical network, with intermediate layers of subschemas. These schemas have a motivating function with respect to existing complex words and specify how new complex words can be formed. The consequence of this view of morphology is that there is no sharp boundary between lexicon and grammar. In addition, the use of morphological patterns may also depend on specific syntactic constructions (construction-dependent morphology). This theory of lexical relatedness also provides insight into language change such as the use of obsolete case markers as markers of specific constructions, the change of words into affixes, and the debonding of word constituents into independent words. Studies of language acquisition and word processing confirm this view of the lexicon and the nature of lexical knowledge. Construction Morphology is also well equipped for dealing with inflection and the relationships between the cells of inflectional paradigms, because it can express how morphological schemas are related paradigmatically.

Situating morphology

2019 ◽  
pp. 3-24
Author(s):  
Ray Jackendoff ◽  
Jenny Audring
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Parallel Architecture ◽  
Fundamental Feature ◽  
Construction Morphology ◽  
Morphological Theory ◽  
Language Capacity ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Shared Structure

The book has three interwoven themes: a morphological theory, the structure of the lexicon, and an integrated account of the language capacity and its place in the mind. These themes together constitute the theory of Relational Morphology (RM), itself an extension of the Parallel Architecture of Jackendoff’s Foundations of Language, and closely related to Construction Grammar and Construction Morphology. A fundamental feature is that phonology, syntax, and semantics are independent components of language, linked by interfaces. Another feature is the continuity between lexicon and grammar. RM extends these features to the internal structure of words. In particular, morphology is constituted of a morphosyntactic component and its interfaces to phonology, phrasal syntax, and semantics. Furthermore, RM expresses regularities among words not in terms of rules that derive morphologically complex words, but in terms of declarative schemas that capture patterns of shared structure. The chapter concludes with a survey of similarities and differences between phrasal syntax and morphosyntax.

Word frequency modulates morpheme-based reading in poor and skilled Italian readers

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
STEFANIA MARCOLINI ◽  
DANIELA TRAFICANTE ◽  
PIERLUIGI ZOCCOLOTTI ◽  
CRISTINA BURANI
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Reading Fluency ◽  
Reading Ability ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Adult Readers ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Derivational Suffix

ABSTRACTA previous study reported that, similar to young and adult skilled readers, Italian developmental dyslexics read pseudowords made up of a root and a derivational suffix faster and more accurately than simple pseudowords. Unlike skilled readers, only dyslexic and reading-matched younger children benefited from morphological structure in reading words aloud. In this study, we show that word frequency affects the probability of morpheme-based reading, interacting with reading ability. Young skilled readers named low- but not high-frequency morphologically complex words faster than simple words. By contrast, the advantage for morphologically complex words was present in poor readers irrespective of word frequency. Adult readers showed no facilitating effect of morphological structure. These results indicate that young readers use reading units (morphemes) that are larger than the single-grapheme grain size. It is argued that morpheme-based reading is important for obtaining reading fluency (rather than accuracy) in transparent orthographies and is useful particularly in children with limited reading ability who do not fully master whole-word processing.

scholarly journals Paradigmatic enhancement of stem vowels in regular English inflected verb forms

Morphology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-199
Author(s):  
Fabian Tomaschek ◽  
Benjamin V. Tucker ◽  
Michael Ramscar ◽  
R. Harald Baayen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Morphological Processing ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Phonetic Realization

AbstractMany theories of word structure in linguistics and morphological processing in cognitive psychology are grounded in a compositional perspective on the (mental) lexicon in which complex words are built up during speech production from sublexical elements such as morphemes, stems, and exponents. When combined with the hypothesis that storage in the lexicon is restricted to the irregular, the prediction follows that properties specific to regular inflected words cannot co-determine the phonetic realization of these inflected words. This study shows that the stem vowels of regular English inflected verb forms that are more frequent in their paradigm are produced with more enhanced articulatory gestures in the midsaggital plane, challenging compositional models of lexical processing. The effect of paradigmatic probability dovetails well with the Paradigmatic Enhancement Hypothesis and is consistent with a growing body of research indicating that the whole is more than its parts.

Morphology Matters, but What Do Teacher Candidates Know About It?

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 246-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin K. Washburn ◽  
Candace A. Mulcahy
Keyword(s):  
Special Education ◽  
Special Education Teachers ◽  
Teacher Candidates ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Reading Teachers ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Secondary Grades ◽  
Striving Readers ◽  
Complex Words

Skilled reading is a complex process in which many subskills are involved, including an awareness of the morphological structure of language. Morphological awareness is the ability to understand how words are broken into meaningful units (e.g., affixes, root words). Explicit and systematic teaching of morphological concepts are reported to help striving readers, particularly those in upper elementary, middle, and secondary grades, with reading. To teach morphological concepts and their relation to reading, teachers need to have both awareness and knowledge of morphology. In the present study, general and special education teachers’ knowledge of morphological concepts are examined. Results indicate that teachers, regardless of type of certification (general vs. special education) or grade level (elementary vs. secondary), have difficulty identifying morphemes in both simple and complex words. Suggestions for what and how teacher educators can integrate the teaching of morphological concepts into teacher preparation contexts are provided.

scholarly journals DO LANGUAGE CHANGE RATES DEPEND ON POPULATION SIZE?

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (03) ◽  
pp. 357-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
SØREN WICHMANN ◽  
DIETRICH STAUFFER ◽  
CHRISTIAN SCHULZE ◽  
ERIC W. HOLMAN
Keyword(s):  
Population Size ◽  
Computer Simulations ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Strong Dependence ◽  
Language Model ◽  
Population Sizes

An earlier study [24] concluded, based on computer simulations and some inferences from empirical data, that languages will change the more slowly the larger the population gets. We replicate this study using a more complete language model for simulations (the Schulze model combined with a Barabási–Albert network) and a richer empirical dataset [12]. Our simulations show either a negligible or a strong dependence of language change on population sizes, depending on the parameter settings; while empirical data, like some of the simulations, show a negligible dependence.

Sensitivity of children's inflection to grammatical structure

1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Kim ◽  
Gary F. Marcus ◽  
Steven Pinker ◽  
Michelle Hollander ◽  
Marie Coppola
Keyword(s):  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Default Rule ◽  
Grammatical Structure ◽  
Tree Structures ◽  
Phonological Features ◽  
Ambiguity Reduction ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
The City ◽  
Better Than

ABSTRACTWhat is the input to the mental System that computes inflected forms likewalked, came, dogs, andmen? Recent connectionist models feed a word's phonological features into a single network, allowing it to generalize both regular and irregular phonological patterns, likestop-stopped, step-steppedandfling-flung, cling-clung. But for adults, phonological input is insufficient: verbs derived from nouns likering the cityalways have regular past tense forms (ringed), even if they are phonologically identical to irregular verbs (ring the bell). Similarly, nouns based on names, liketwo Mickey Mouses, and compounds based on possessing rather than being their root morpheme, such astwo sabertooths, take regular plurals, even when they are homophonous with irregular nouns likemiceandteeth. In four experiments, testing 70 three- to ten-year-old children, we found that children are sensitive to such nonphonological information: they were more likely to produce regular inflected forms for forms liketo ring(‘to put a ring on’) andsnaggletooth(a kind of animal doll with big teeth) than for their homophonous irregular counterparts, even when these counterparts were also extended in meaning. Children's inflectional Systems thus seem to be like adults': irregular forms are tied to the lexicon but regular forms are computed by a default rule, and words are represented as morphological tree structures reflecting their derivation from basic word roots. Such structures, which determine how novel complex words are derived and interpreted, also govern whether words with irregular sound patterns will be regularized: a word can be irregular only if its structure contains an irregular root in ‘head’ position, allowing the lexically stored irregular information to percolate up to apply to the word as a whole. In all other cases, the inflected form is computed by a default regular rule. This proposal fits the facts better than alternatives appealing to ambiguity reduction or semantic similarity to a word's central sense. The results, together with an analysis of adult speech to children, suggest that morphological structure and a distinction between mechanisms for regular and irregular inflection may be inherent to the design of children's language Systems.

Psycholinguistic Approaches to Morphology: Theoretical Issues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina L. Gagné
Keyword(s):  
Human Mind ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Word Structure ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Morphological Priming ◽  
Types Of Information ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Theoretical Issues

Psycholinguistics is the study of how language is acquired, represented, and used by the human mind; it draws on knowledge about both language and cognitive processes. A central topic of debate in psycholinguistics concerns the balance between storage and processing. This debate is especially evident in research concerning morphology, which is the study of word structure, and several theoretical issues have arisen concerning the question of how (or whether) morphology is represented and what function morphology serves in the processing of complex words. Five theoretical approaches have emerged that differ substantially in the emphasis placed on the role of morphemic representations during the processing of morphologically complex words. The first approach minimizes processing by positing that all words, even morphologically complex ones, are stored and recognized as whole units, without the use of morphemic representations. The second approach posits that words are represented and processed in terms of morphemic units. The third approach is a mixture of the first two approaches and posits that a whole-access route and decomposition route operate in parallel. A fourth approach posits that both whole word representations and morphemic representations are used, and that these two types of information interact. A fifth approach proposes that morphology is not explicitly represented, but rather, emerges from the co-activation of orthographic/phonological representations and semantic representations. These competing approaches have been evaluated using a wide variety of empirical methods examining, for example, morphological priming, the role of constituent and word frequency, and the role of morphemic position. For the most part, the evidence points to the involvement of morphological representations during the processing of complex words. However, the specific way in which these representations are used is not yet fully known.

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.

Issues in Neurolinguistic Studies of Morphology

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Fiorentino
Keyword(s):  
Word Processing ◽  
Time Course ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Basic Unit ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Form Complex ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Complex Words ◽  
The Brain

Research in neurolinguistics examines how language is organized and processed in the human brain. The findings from neurolinguistic studies on language can inform our understanding of the basic ingredients of language and the operations they undergo. In the domain of the lexicon, a major debate concerns whether and to what extent the morpheme serves as a basic unit of linguistic representation, and in turn whether and under what circumstances the processing of morphologically complex words involves operations that identify, activate, and combine morpheme-level representations during lexical processing. Alternative models positing some role for morphemes argue that complex words are processed via morphological decomposition and composition in the general case (full-decomposition models), or only under certain circumstances (dual-route models), while other models do not posit a role for morphemes (non-morphological models), instead arguing that complex words are related to their constituents not via morphological identity, but either via associations among whole-word representations or via similarity in formal and/or semantic features. Two main approaches to investigating the role of morphemes from a neurolinguistic perspective are neuropsychology, in which complex word processing is typically investigated in cases of brain insult or neurodegenerative disease, and brain imaging, which makes it possible to examine the temporal dynamics and neuroanatomy of complex word processing as it occurs in the brain. Neurolinguistic studies on morphology have examined whether the processing of complex words involves brain mechanisms that rapidly segment the input into potential morpheme constituents, how and under what circumstances morpheme representations are accessed from the lexicon, and how morphemes are combined to form complex morphosyntactic and morpho-semantic representations. Findings from this literature broadly converge in suggesting a role for morphemes in complex word processing, although questions remain regarding the precise time course by which morphemes are activated, the extent to which morpheme access is constrained by semantic or form properties, as well as regarding the brain mechanisms by which morphemes are ultimately combined into complex representations.

Neural Correlates of Morphological Decomposition during Visual Word Recognition

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 1983-1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian T. Gold ◽  
Kathleen Rastle
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Visual Word Recognition ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Masked Priming ◽  
Visual Word ◽  
Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Complex Words

Considerable behavioral research has demonstrated that the visual word recognition system is sensitive to morphological structure. It has typically been assumed that analysis of morphologically complex words occurs only when the meaning of these words can be derived from the meanings of their constituents (e.g., hunter = hunt + er). However, results from recent behavioral research using the masked priming technique have demonstrated that morphological analysis can occur at an earlier orthographic level, in cases in which the meanings of complex words cannot be derived from their constituents (e.g., corner = corn + er). Here, we combine the logic of behavioral masked priming with the neurophysiological phenomenon of functional magnetic resonance imaging priming suppression to look for evidence of nonsemantic morphological priming at the neural level. Both behavioral and functional magnetic resonance imaging results indicated priming effects associated with the mere appearance of morphological structure (corner—CORN). In addition, these effects were distinguishable from lexical-semantic effects (bucket—PAIL) and orthographic effects (brothel—BROTH). Three left-lateralized occipito-temporal regions showed sensitivity to early morphological components of visual word recognition. Two of these regions also showed orthographic priming (∼BA 37, peak: −48 −60 −17; ∼BA 19, peak: −40 −77 −1), whereas one was sensitive only to morphological similarity between primes and targets (∼BA 19, peak: ∼37 ∼67 ∼7). These findings provide a neurobiological basis for a purely structural morphemic segmentation mechanism operating at early stages of visual word recognition.

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