scholarly journals Does diacritics‐based lexical disambiguation modulate word frequency, length, and predictability effects? An eye‐movements investigation of processing Arabic diacritics

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0259987
Author(s):  
Ehab W. Hermena ◽  
Sana Bouamama ◽  
Simon P. Liversedge ◽  
Denis Drieghe

In Arabic, a predominantly consonantal script that features a high incidence of lexical ambiguity (heterophonic homographs), glyph-like marks called diacritics supply vowel information that clarifies how each consonant should be pronounced, and thereby disambiguate the pronunciation of consonantal strings. Diacritics are typically omitted from print except in situations where a particular homograph is not sufficiently disambiguated by the surrounding context. In three experiments we investigated whether the presence of disambiguating diacritics on target homographs modulates word frequency, length, and predictability effects during reading. In all experiments, the subordinate representation of the target homographs was instantiated by the diacritics (in the diacritized conditions), and by the context subsequent to the target homographs. The results replicated the effects of word frequency (Experiment 1), word length (Experiment 2), and predictability (Experiment 3). However, there was no evidence that diacritics-based disambiguation modulated these effects in the current study. Rather, diacritized targets in all experiments attracted longer first pass and later (go past and/or total fixation count) processing. These costs are suggested to be a manifestation of the subordinate bias effect. Furthermore, in all experiments, the diacritics-based disambiguation facilitated later sentence processing, relative to when the diacritics were absent. The reported findings expand existing knowledge about processing of diacritics, their contribution towards lexical ambiguity resolution, and sentence processing.

PLoS ONE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. e0176281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Angwin ◽  
Nadeeka N. W. Dissanayaka ◽  
Katie L. McMahon ◽  
Peter A. Silburn ◽  
David A. Copland

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin M. Brown ◽  
Peter Hagoort ◽  
Mariken ter Keurs

n This paper presents evidence of the disputed existence of an electrophysiological marker for the lexical-categorical distinction between open-and closed-class words. Event-related brain potentials were recorded from the scalp while subjects read a story. Separate waveforms were computed for open-and closed-class words. Two aspects of the waveforms could be reliably related to vocabulary class. The first was an early negativity in the 230-to 350-msec epoch, with a bilateral anterior predominance. This negativity was elicited by open-and closed-class words alike, was not affected by word frequency or word length, and had an earlier peak latency for closed-class words. The second was a frontal slow negative shift in the 350-to 500-msec epoch, largest over the left side of the scalp. This late negativity was only elicited by closed-class words. Although the early negativity cannot serve as a qualitative marker of the open-and closed-class distinction, it does reflect the earliest electrophysiological manifestation of the availability of categorical information from the mental lexicon. These results suggest that the brain honors the distinction between open-and closed-class words, in relation to the different roles that they play in on-line sentence processing.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (9) ◽  
pp. 2589-2602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gayle DeDe

Purpose Previous eye-tracking research has suggested that individuals with aphasia (IWA) do not assign syntactic structure on their first pass through a sentence during silent reading comprehension. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the time course with which lexical variables affect silent reading comprehension in IWA. Three lexical variables were investigated: word frequency, word class, and word length. Methods IWA and control participants without brain damage participated in the experiment. Participants read sentences while a camera tracked their eye movements. Results IWA showed effects of word class, word length, and word frequency that were similar to or greater than those observed in controls. Conclusions IWA showed sensitivity to lexical variables on the first pass through the sentence. The results are consistent with the view that IWA focus on lexical access on their first pass through a sentence and then work to build syntactic structure on subsequent passes. In addition, IWA showed very long rereading times and low skipping rates overall, which may contribute to some of the group differences in reading comprehension.


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