Differences in perception and memory for speech fragments in complex versus simple words

Two experiments investigated how people perceived and remembered fragments of spoken words that either corresponded to correct lexical entries (as in the complex word drink-er) or did not (as in the simple word glitt-er). Experiment 1 was a noise-rating task that probed perception. Participants heard stimuli such drinker, where strikethrough indicates noise overlaid at a controlled signal-to-noise ratio, and rated the loudness of the noise. Results showed that participants rated noise on certain pseudo-roots (e.g., glitter) as louder than noise on true roots ( drinker), indicating that they perceived them with less clarity. Experiment 2 was an eye-fixation task that probed memory. Participants heard a word such as drink-er while associating each fragment with a visual shape. At test, they saw the shapes again, and were asked to look at the shape associated with a particular fragment, such as drink. Results showed that fixations to shapes associated with pseudo-affixes (-er in glitter) were less accurate than fixations to shapes associated with true affixes (-er in drinker), which suggests that they remembered the pseudo-affixes more poorly. These findings provide evidence that the presence of correct lexical entries for roots and affixes modulates people’s judgments about the speech that they hear.

Complex versus compound prepositions

In addition to monomorphemic, and often monosyllabic, prepositions like French à, de, en, Gallo-Romance languages have a variety of items which have developed from original multi-word sequences. This chapter begins by examining the etymological sources and diachronic processes involved, dividing the items so formed into two distinct classes of complex prepositions (e.g. Occitan a dich de ‘by virtue of’) and compound prepositions (e.g. French avant ‘before’). It goes on to compare the different types of analysis that have been proposed for these items, concentrating in particular on the approach of nanosyntax and arguing against the syntactico-centric take on linguistic analysis that such an approach implies.

Relativiser Alternation and Relative Clause Complexity: Insights from Nigerian and American Varieties

Idiosyncrasies and peculiarities distinguishing new Englishes from the established ones are often identified and measured by examining the extent to which structural choices and patterns vary across the board. The competition between relativisers wh- and that in the construction of relative clause, which itself is a structurally complex-versus-simple construction site, allows for showing the extent to which choice of a relativiser relates to the construction of a complex or simple relative clause, given different factors. On the other hand, such investigation can also shed some light on the extent to which structural com- plexity characterises new varieties of English. Relying on 628 relative clauses drawn from written academic corpus, the study shows that WH-relativiser is preferred to THAT-relativiser by the Nigerian speakers, and vice versa by the American speakers. It is also found that WH-relative clause is more likely to be complex-structured while THAT-relative clause is more likely to be simple-structured. Among eight factors tested for independent effects, the factors representing relativiser posterior syntactic form, syntactic function, and syntactic positioning of the relative clause appeared to be strong predictors of where we might (not) find a certain relativiser and whether a complex or simple relative clause will emerge.