The Semantic Comprehension of Persian Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds in non-Persian Speakers

Semantic comprehension of Persian compound nouns in non-Persian speakers of TPSL department was investigated using a cognitive-semantics approach. Regarding the semantic relationships between the bases of compound nouns, two were selected based on presence or lack of semantic head. Then, sufficient data were collected from different texts through a desk research method to make a frequency dictionary of endocentric and exocentric compound nouns based on the knowledge level of students. A definition-word pairing test was then selected and most frequent compound nouns (24 compound nouns) were identified and used for the test, developed and run in the form of an application for smart phones by an application developer and participants were provided with it. Overall, 888 data were collected from the test results and analyzed using standard statistical tests suggesting that due to presence of semantic head in endocentric compounds, speed and level of comprehending them was higher than exocentric compounds; moreover, a correlational relationship between comprehension of these compounds was identified. Therefore, the relationship between components of endocentric compounds was understood faster than exocentric compounds. Thus, applicability of CARIN theory was verified.

The Semantic Comprehension of Persian Endocentric and Exocentric Compounds in non-Persian Speakers

Semantic comprehension of Persian compound nouns in non-Persian speakers of TPSL department was investigated using a cognitive-semantics approach. Regarding the semantic relationships between the bases of compound nouns, two were selected based on presence or lack of semantic head. Then, sufficient data were collected from different texts through a desk research method to make a frequency dictionary of endocentric and exocentric compound nouns based on the knowledge level of students. A definition-word pairing test was then selected and most frequent compound nouns (24 compound nouns) were identified and used for the test, developed and run in the form of an application for smart phones by an application developer and participants were provided with it. Overall, 888 data were collected from the test results and analyzed using standard statistical tests suggesting that due to presence of semantic head in endocentric compounds, speed and level of comprehending them was higher than exocentric compounds; moreover, a correlational relationship between comprehension of these compounds was identified. Therefore, the relationship between components of endocentric compounds was understood faster than exocentric compounds. Thus, applicability of CARIN theory was verified.

Fourteen-month-olds’ sensitivity to acoustic salience in minimal pair word learning

During the first two years of life, infants concurrently refine native-language speech categories and word learning skills. However, in the Switch Task, 14-month-olds do not detect minimal contrasts in a novel object–word pairing (Stager & Werker, 1997). We investigate whether presenting infants with acoustically salient contrasts (liquids) facilitates success in the Switch Task. The first two experiments demonstrate that acoustic differences boost infants’ detection of contrasts. However, infants cannot detect the contrast when the segments are digitally shortened. Thus, not all minimal contrasts are equally difficult, and the acoustic properties of a contrast matter in word learning.

How Iconicity Helps People Learn New Words: Neural Correlates and Individual Differences in Sound-Symbolic Bootstrapping

Sound symbolism is increasingly understood as involving iconicity, or perceptual analogies and cross-modal correspondences between form and meaning, but the search for its functional and neural correlates is ongoing. Here we study how people learn sound-symbolic words, using behavioural, electrophysiological and individual difference measures. Dutch participants learned Japanese ideophones —lexical sound-symbolic words— with a translation of either the real meaning (in which form and meaning show cross-modal correspondences) or the opposite meaning (in which form and meaning show cross-modal clashes). Participants were significantly better at identifying the words they learned in the real condition, correctly remembering the real word pairing 86.7% of the time, but the opposite word pairing only 71.3% of the time. Analysing event-related potentials (ERPs) during the test round showed that ideophones in the real condition elicited a greater P3 component and late positive complex than ideophones in the opposite condition. In a subsequent forced choice task, participants were asked to guess the real translation from two alternatives. They did this with 73.0% accuracy, well above chance level even for words they had encountered in the opposite condition, showing that people are generally sensitive to the sound-symbolic cues in ideophones. Individual difference measures showed that the ERP effect in the test round of the learning task was greater for participants who were more sensitive to sound symbolism in the forced choice task. The main driver of the difference was a lower amplitude of the P3 component in response to ideophones in the opposite condition, suggesting that people who are more sensitive to sound symbolism may have more difficulty to suppress conflicting cross-modal information. The findings provide new evidence that cross-modal correspondences between sound and meaning facilitate word learning, while cross-modal clashes make word learning harder, especially for people who are more sensitive to sound symbolism.