Neural correlates of confusability in recognition of morphologically complex Korean words

When people confuse and reject a non-word that is created by switching two adjacent letters from an actual word, is called the transposition confusability effect (TCE). The TCE is known to occur at the very early stages of visual word recognition with such unit exchange as letters or syllables, but little is known about the brain mechanisms of TCE. In this study, we examined the neural correlates of TCE and the effect of a morpheme boundary placement on TCE. We manipulated the placement of a morpheme boundary by exchanging places of two syllables embedded in Korean morphologically complex words made up of lexical morpheme and grammatical morpheme. In the two experimental conditions, the transposition syllable within-boundary condition (TSW) involved exchanging two syllables within the same morpheme, whereas the across-boundary condition (TSA) involved the exchange of syllables across the stem and grammatical morpheme boundary. During fMRI, participants performed the lexical decision task. Behavioral results revealed that the TCE was found in TSW condition, and the morpheme boundary, which is manipulated in TSA, modulated the TCE. In the fMRI results, TCE induced activation in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) and intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The IPS activation was specific to a TCE and its strength of activation was associated with task performance. Furthermore, two functional networks were involved in the TCE: the central executive network and the dorsal attention network. Morpheme boundary modulation suppressed the TCE by recruiting the prefrontal and temporal regions, which are the key regions involved in semantic processing. Our findings propose the role of the dorsal visual pathway in syllable position processing and that its interaction with other higher cognitive systems is modulated by the morphological boundary in the early phases of visual word recognition.

Post-nasal voicing in Japanese classifiers as exceptional triggering: implications for Indexed Constraint Theory

Indexed constraints are often used in constraint-based phonological frameworks to account for exceptions to generalizations. A point of contention in the literature on constraint indexation revolves around indexed markedness constraints. While some researchers argue that only faithfulness constraints should be indexed, others argue that markedness constraints should be eligible for indexation as well. This article presents data from Japanese for which a complete synchronic analysis requires indexed markedness constraints but argues that such constraints are only necessary in cases where a phonological repair applies across a morpheme boundary. We then demonstrate that algorithms for learning grammars with indexed constraints can be augmented with a bias towards faithfulness indexation and discuss the advantages of incorporating such a bias, as well as its implications for the debate over the permissibility of indexed markedness constraints.

An Overlooked Key Element in North Wakashan Morphophonemics

Investigated is a morphophonemic entity that manifests itself in a rich variety of ways including doubling or glottalization of a resonant; the phonemes /a/, /i/, /u/; the morpheme boundary marker /ə/ and, in the variety of North Wakashan made famous by Franz Boas, an opposition type unknown in the other varieties. It is a byproduct of some of the complex processes triggered by attaching certain types of suffix to a stem but occurs also as a constituent of morphemes and as a device to turn bound roots into free forms. It has never before been identified and is a warning that we are nowhere near understanding the history of North Wakashan, let alone its possible relationships to neighbouring languages. No North Wakashan expertise is necessary to follow the discussion which is preceded by essential comparative phonemic and morphophonemic information.

Consonant Insertion in Iyinno: A Critique

Unlike vowel insertion (epenthesis), consonant insertion is a rare occurrence in languages. It is against this backdrop that this study examines the occurrence of consonant insertion in Ì̩yí̩nnó̩ as claimed by Ibikunle (2008:122). He (Ibikunle 2008:122) claimed that, there is an insertion of voiced bilabial nasal [m] between two nouns while combining them to form new words. This paper shows that, the voiced bilabial nasal [m] found between two nouns in the lect is not the case of consonant insertion but rather, an associative morpheme (a genitive marker) [mὲ] which has lost its vocalic anchor as a result of hiatus resolution across morpheme boundary. Also, our study reveals that, after [mέ] has lost its vocalic anchor, the nasal feature of [m] got transferred to the (oral) V1 of the second noun across morpheme boundary.

Consonant Insertion in Iyinno: A Critique

Unlike vowel insertion (epenthesis), consonant insertion is a rare occurrence in languages. It is against this backdrop that this study examines the occurrence of consonant insertion in Ì̩yí̩nnó̩ as claimed by Ibikunle (2008:122). He (Ibikunle 2008:122) claimed that, there is an insertion of voiced bilabial nasal [m] between two nouns while combining them to form new words. This paper shows that, the voiced bilabial nasal [m] found between two nouns in the lect is not the case of consonant insertion but rather, an associative morpheme (a genitive marker) [mὲ] which has lost its vocalic anchor as a result of hiatus resolution across morpheme boundary. Also, our study reveals that, after [mέ] has lost its vocalic anchor, the nasal feature of [m] got transferred to the (oral) V1 of the second noun across morpheme boundary.

Exceptionality and derived environment effects: a comparison of Korean and Turkish

Morphologically derived environment effects (MDEEs) are well-known examples where phonotactic patterns in the lexicon mismatch with what is allowed at morphological boundaries – alternations. Analyses of MDEEs usually assume that the alternation is morphologically general, and that the sequences ‘repaired’ across morpheme boundaries are phonotactically well-formed in the lexicon. This paper examines the phonotactic patterns in the lexicon of two languages with MDEEs: Korean palatalisation and Turkish velar deletion. I show that Korean heteromorphemic sequences that undergo palatalisation are underattested in the lexicon. A computational learner learns a markedness constraint that drives palatalisation, suggesting a pattern of exceptional non-undergoing. This contrasts with Turkish, where the relevant constraint motivating velar deletion at the morpheme boundary is unavailable from phonotactic learning, and where the alternation is an example of exceptional triggering. These results indicate that MDEEs are not a unitary phenomenon, highlighting the need to examine these patterns in closer quantitative detail.

Asymmetry of Kazakh velar and uvular consonants

Little descriptive work has been done on the place and voicing restrictions of the asymmetrical velar and uvular consonant inventory in Kazakh. In Kazakh, velar and uvular consonants are restricted depending on their neighbouring vowel. Velars appear in front vowel environments and uvulars appear in back vowel environments (place restriction). Voiced and voiceless velars and uvulars are restricted depending on their position in the word. At the morpheme boundary, velars and uvulars are voiceless in the word-final position and voiced in the stem-final position, when followed by a vowel-initial suffix (voicing restriction). The results from elicitation-based production experiments with six native Kazakh speakers reveal that the place restriction is not productive from real words to nonce words but the voicing restriction is. The data suggests a derived-environment effect where the resulting voicing process is conditioned morphologically. A theoretical analysis within Optimality Theory captures the voicing pattern using an indexed-markedness constraint and Local Conjunction.

Emphasis spread in the Djelfa dialect of Algerian Arabic

The paper documents Emphasis spread in the Djelfa dialect (DJ) of Algerian Arabic with a special examination of the emphatic segments /sˤ/, /tˤ/ and /ðˤ/. If a given word contains an underlying emphatic segment, the nearby segments are also realized with emphasis. The dialect, however, differentiates two types of emphasis spread: unbounded leftward spread that propagates from the emphatic segment till the beginning of the phonological word; and bounded rightward spread that is blocked by a set of segments /i/, /j/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/. Of particular interest in the current investigation is the behavior of emphasis spread (ES) with respect to morpheme boundaries. While the left morpheme edge is realized with ES, the right morpheme boundary is deemed resistant to ES unless an underlying emphatic segment falls prior to a -V(C) suffix. This is well captured by the interplay between the markedness constraints FAITH [RTR] SUFFIX and SHARE (RTR).

Morphology and Phonotactics

Phonotactics is the study of restrictions on possible sound sequences in a language. In any language, some phonotactic constraints can be stated without reference to morphology, but many of the more nuanced phonotactic generalizations do make use of morphosyntactic and lexical information. At the most basic level, many languages mark edges of words in some phonological way. Different phonotactic constraints hold of sounds that belong to the same morpheme as opposed to sounds that are separated by a morpheme boundary. Different phonotactic constraints may apply to morphemes of different types (such as roots versus affixes). There are also correlations between phonotactic shapes and following certain morphosyntactic and phonological rules, which may correlate to syntactic category, declension class, or etymological origins. Approaches to the interaction between phonotactics and morphology address two questions: (1) how to account for rules that are sensitive to morpheme boundaries and structure and (2) determining the status of phonotactic constraints associated with only some morphemes. Theories differ as to how much morphological information phonology is allowed to access. In some theories of phonology, any reference to the specific identities or subclasses of morphemes would exclude a rule from the domain of phonology proper. These rules are either part of the morphology or are not given the status of a rule at all. Other theories allow the phonological grammar to refer to detailed morphological and lexical information. Depending on the theory, phonotactic differences between morphemes may receive direct explanations or be seen as the residue of historical change and not something that constitutes grammatical knowledge in the speaker’s mind.

Syllables and inflectional morphemes in early Finnish readers: evidence from eye-movements

Finnish is a language with simple syllable structure but rich morphology. It was investigated whether syllables or morphemes are preferred processing units in early reading. To this end, Finnish first- and second-grade children read sentences with embedded inflected target words while their eye-movements were registered. The target words were either in essive or inessive/adessive (i.e., locative) case. The target words were either non-hyphenated, or had syllable-congruent or syllable-incongruent hyphenation. For the locatives, the syllable-incongruent hyphenation coincided with the morpheme boundary, but this was not the case for the essives. It was shown that the second-graders were slowed down by hyphenation to a larger extent than first-graders. However, there was no slowdown in gaze duration for either age group when the syllable-incongruent hyphen was morpheme-congruent. These findings suggest that Finnish readers already utilize morpheme-level information during the first grade.