complex words
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2022 ◽  
pp. 556-569
Author(s):  
Alpana Bhattacharya

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of evidence-based word analysis approaches for promoting accurate and fluent reading of complex words by adolescents with a specific reading disability (i.e., dyslexia). First, research has been reviewed to pinpoint the characteristics and causes of dyslexia as a specific learning disability. Specifically, two theories of dyslexia, the phonological theory of dyslexia and the magnocellular theory of dyslexia, have been discussed to ascertain the causal attributes of phonological awareness deficits and auditory and visual sequencing deficits to word recognition difficulties of adolescents with dyslexia. Next, two theories of word recognition, particularly the dual-route model of word recognition and connectionist model of word recognition, have been discussed to clarify the mechanism underlying the manifestation of dyslexia and resultant difficulties with word recognition. Finally, evidence-based word analysis programs have been described as approaches for improving word reading ability of adolescents with dyslexia.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Samantha Wray ◽  
Linnaea Stockall ◽  
Alec Marantz

Abstract Neuro- and psycholinguistic experimentation supports the early decomposition of morphologically complex words within the ventral processing stream, which MEG has localized to the M170 response in the (left) visual word form area (VWFA). Decomposition into an exhaustive parse of visual morpheme forms extends beyond words like “farmer” to those imitating complexity (e.g. “brother”, Lewis et al. 2011), and to “unique” stems occurring in only one word but following the syntax and semantics of their affix (e.g. “vulnerable”, Gwilliams & Marantz 2018). Evidence comes primarily from suffixation; other morphological processes have been under-investigated. This study explores circumfixation, infixation, and reduplication in Tagalog. In addition to investigating whether these are parsed like suffixation, we address an outstanding question concerning semantically empty morphemes. Some words in Tagalog resemble English “winter” as decomposition is not supported (wint-er); these apparently reduplicated pseudoreduplicates lack the syntactic and semantic features of reduplicated forms. However, unlike “winter,” these words exhibit phonological behavior predicted only if they involve a reduplicating morpheme. If these are decomposed, this provides evidence that words are analyzed as complex, like English “vulnerable”, when the grammar demands it. In a lexical decision task with MEG, we find that VWFA activity correlates with stem:word transition probability for circumfixed, infixed and reduplicated words. Furthermore, a Bayesian analysis suggests that pseudoreduplicates with reduplicate-like phonology are also decomposed; other pseudoreduplicates are not. These findings are consistent with an interpretation that decomposition is modulated by phonology in addition to syntax and semantics.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Medhat Elsherif ◽  
Jon Catling

Age of acquisition (AoA) is a measure of learning experience and a strong predictor of lexical retrieval. According to the integrated view, the AoA effect results from the development of semantic representations and the mappings between these representations. This has not been considered in morphologically complex words. The integrated account predicts that the AoA effect should be larger in tasks requiring greater semantic processing and any AoA effects should be shown in the early processes of word recognition. The present study investigates these predictions in compound words, which differ from monomorphemic words in terms of ease of mapping and semantic processes in lexical retrieval. Forty-eight participants completed a compound lexeme segmentation (CLS) task, in which participants named either the head or modifier depending on the number above the compound word, to establish how semantics are involved in processing the head and the modifier. The results demonstrated that semantics influenced the naming of the modifier to a greater extent than the head, with the AoA effect being larger in the modifier than the head. Our findings provide evidence that aligns with the multiple origins of AoA effects in the language processing system.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofia Loui ◽  
Athanassios Protopapas ◽  
Eleni Orfanidou

The present study examined differences between inflectional and derivational morphology using Greek nouns and verbs with masked priming (with both short and long stimulus onset asynchrony) and long-lag priming. A lexical decision task to inflected noun and verb targets was used to test whether their processing is differentially facilitated by prior presentation of their stem in words of the same grammatical class (inflectional morphology) or of a different grammatical class (derivational morphology). Differences in semantics, syntactic information, and morphological complexity between inflected and derived word pairs (both nouns and verbs) were minimized by unusually tight control of stimuli as permitted by Greek morphology. Results showed that morphological relations affected processing of morphologically complex Greek words (nouns and verbs) across prime durations (50–250ms) as well as when items intervened between primes and targets. In two of the four experiments (Experiments 1 and 3), inflectionally related primes produced significantly greater effects than derivationally related primes suggesting differences in processing inflectional versus derivational morphological relations, which may disappear when processing is less dependent on semantic effects (Experiment 4). Priming effects differed for verb vs. noun targets with long SOA priming (Experiment 3), consistent with processing differences between complex words of different grammatical class (nouns and verbs) when semantic effects are maximized. Taken together, results demonstrate that inflectional and derivational relations differentially affect processing complex words of different grammatical class (nouns and verbs). This finding indicates that distinctions of morphological relation (inflectional vs. derivational) are not of the same kind as distinctions of grammatical class (nouns vs. verbs). Asymmetric differences among inflected and derived verbs and nouns seem to depend on semantic effects and/or processing demands modulating priming effects very early in lexical processing of morphologically complex written words, consistent with models of lexical processing positing early access to morphological structure and early influence of semantics.


Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
Ilia Akhmeev ◽  
Larisa Georgievna Popova

The goal of this article is to determine similarities and differences in the process of adaptation of Anglicisms in the German and Russian languages. The subject of this research is Anglicisms that are structurally represented by complex words. The topic of adaptation of Anglicisms – complex words – was selected due its poor coverage in the comparative linguistics. The article determines the derivational models of Anglicisms used in the German and Russian publicistic texts. The author traces the similarity in the presence of derivational models of Anglicisms, namely: word from the recipient language word + English word, English word + word of the recipient language, English word + English word, combinations of 3 or more English words. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that this article is first to determine the similarities and differences in adaptation of Anglicisms based on the German and Russian publicistic texts. The conclusion is made that unlike Russian language, German language features a wide variety of compounding models. The German language is characterized by the connecting consonant ‘s’ for linking several word roots; while the Russian language is characterizes by the connecting vowel ‘o’. The author also concludes on the similarities and differences of the compared languages in terms of the tendency of grammatical assimilation of the English borrowings. It is noted that in the Russian language they are often masculine, while in German there are almost as many masculine Anglicisms as neuter, as well as a number of feminine Anglicisms. The acquired results can be applied in reading the lectures on comparative lexicology of the German and Russian languages.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Ahmed Zrig

This study examined the relationship between morphological awareness and word complexity (simple versus complex words) in an EFL context. The participants in this study were 100 fourth-year secondary school Arts students in Tunisia. Students’ morphological awareness was measured by the Morphological Awareness Test. Vocabulary size was tested using an adapted version of Nation’s (2001) Vocabulary Levels Test as a receptive measure of vocabulary size. Half of the vocabulary test items were made complex to check the participants’ performance on simple and complex words. The informants’ scores were high on the overall morphological awareness task, and the best performance was on inflectional morphemes. This could be very useful for teachers to build on, improve, and construct better future teaching practices. Finally, morphological awareness differentiated between students’ performance on simple versus complex words. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-198
Author(s):  
U. Marie Engemann ◽  
Ingo Plag

Abstract Recent work on the acoustic properties of complex words has found that morphological information may influence the phonetic properties of words, e.g. acoustic duration. Paradigm uniformity has been proposed as one mechanism that may cause such effects. In a recent experimental study Seyfarth et al. (2017) found that the stems of English inflected words (e.g. frees) have a longer duration than the same string of segments in a homophonous mono-morphemic word (e.g. freeze), due to the co-activation of the longer articulatory gesture of the bare stem (e.g. free). However, not all effects predicted by paradigm uniformity were found in that study, and the role of frequency-related phonetic reduction remained inconclusive. The present paper tries to replicate the effect using conversational speech data from a different variety of English (i.e. New Zealand English), using the QuakeBox Corpus (Walsh et al. 2013). In the presence of word-form frequency as a predictor, stems of plurals were not found to be significantly longer than the corresponding strings of comparable non-complex words. The analysis revealed, however, a frequency-induced gradient paradigm uniformity effect: plural stems become shorter with increasing frequency of the bare stem.


Author(s):  
O. A. Popkova

The proposed article focuses on the emergence and renewal of the lexical composition of the modern Ukrainian language during the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, considers the process of emergence of new complex units, the dynamics of their semantics and their acquisition of new meanings; the appearance of new complex words related to the spread of coronavirus disease and its impact on the linguistic situation in modern newspaper discourse identified trends in their activation. The widespread spread of the disease is reflected not only in medicine and all social spheres, but also in the lexical structure of many languages, including Ukrainian. The purpose of our article is to consider the current changes in complex innovations in the Ukrainian newspaper discourse caused by the new social conditions of existence during the pandemic; to study the origin and functioning of the tokens Covid and coronavirus, to analyze the thematic range and the corresponding communicative and pragmatic potential of complex innovations related to the coverage of Covid-19. The object of the study is complex words represented in the texts of modern newspaper discourse during the pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19. The subject of the study is the communicative and pragmatic features of complex words (based on Ukrainian newspaper texts), the spread of which is associated with the pandemic of the coronavirus COVID-19. It is established that the most common among the complex innovations in the newspaper discourse of this period are the tokens COVID-19, coronavirus, which became a source of widespread creation of new complex words from them. Chronologically, the article covers the period from early 2020 to the first half of 2021. 


Kavkaz-forum ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
И.Н. Цаллагова

Образование композитов происходит путем сложения не просто корней или основ, а слов, каждое из которых имеет свое лексическое значение. Семантическая структура композита основывается на лексических значениях составляющих его компонентов. В ходе словообразовательного акта происходит грамматическое и семантическое сращение двух слов. Однако выбор той или иной лексемы в качестве компонента композита для наименования того или иного предмета, процесса или признака не может быть случайным, иначе говоря, компоненты композитов обладают определенным типом сочетаемости. Следует отметить, что вопросы, связанные с семантической структурой сложных слов, чрезвычайно актуальны в современной лингвистике. Это обусловлено тем, что композитное образование представляет собой отражение ассоциативного мышления человека. Семантическая структура композитных конструкций определяется мотивированностью лексических единиц, участвующих в их образовании. Лексическое значение композита формируется исходя из семантики образующих его лексем, однако, оно имеет свойство выходить за рамки суммы значений компонентов. Целью данного исследования является функциональный анализ компонентов, участвующих в образовании композитов в дигорском диалекте осетинского языка. Комплексный подход к исследуемому материалу обусловил необходимость использования таких методов, как: описательный, сравнительно-сопоставительный, компонентный, статистический. В данной статье рассмотрена морфологическая структура сложных существительных в дигорском диалекте осетинского языка; выявлены основные словообразовательные модели сложных существительных, проведен их частеречный анализ; определена типология отношений между компонентами с учетом степени продуктивности; рассмотрены вопросы, связанные с семантической структурой сложных слов. The formation of composites implies not only uniting roots or stems, but words as well, each of which has its own lexical meaning. The semantic structure of a composite is based on the lexical meanings of its constituent components. In the course of the word-formation act, the grammatical and semantic fusion of two words occurs. However, the choice of one or another lexeme as a component of a composite for the name of a particular object, process, or feature cannot be accidental, in other words, the components of composites have a certain type of compatibility.It should be noted that issues related to the semantic structure of complex words are extremely relevant in modern linguistics. This is due to the fact that formation of compositesis reflection of a person's associative thinking. The semantic structure of composite structures is determined by the motivation of the lexical units involved in their formation. The lexical meaning of a composite is formed on the basis of the semantics of the lexemes that form it, however, it tends to go beyond the sum of the values ​​of the components. The purpose of this study is a functional analysis of the components involved in the formation of composites in the Digor dialect of the Ossetian language.An integrated approach to the material under study necessitated the use of methods such as: descriptive, comparative, component, statistical. This article examines the morphological structure of complex nouns in the Digor dialect of the Ossetian language; the main word-formation models of complex nouns are revealed, their part-of-speech analysis is carried out; the typology of relations between the components isdefined, taking into account the degree of productivity; the issues related to the semantic structure of complex words are considered.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Changcheng Wu ◽  
Junyi Li ◽  
Ye Zhang ◽  
Chunmei Lan ◽  
Kaiji Zhou ◽  
...  

Nowadays, most courses in massive open online course (MOOC) platforms are xMOOCs, which are based on the traditional instruction-driven principle. Course lecture is still the key component of the course. Thus, analyzing lectures of the instructors of xMOOCs would be helpful to evaluate the course quality and provide feedback to instructors and researchers. The current study aimed to portray the lecture styles of instructors in MOOCs from the perspective of natural language processing. Specifically, 129 course transcripts were downloaded from two major MOOC platforms. Two semantic analysis tools (linguistic inquiry and word count and Coh-Metrix) were used to extract semantic features including self-reference, tone, effect, cognitive words, cohesion, complex words, and sentence length. On the basis of the comments of students, course video review, and the results of cluster analysis, we found four different lecture styles: “perfect,” “communicative,” “balanced,” and “serious.” Significant differences were found between the different lecture styles within different disciplines for notes taking, discussion posts, and overall course satisfaction. Future studies could use fine-grained log data to verify the results of our study and explore how to use the results of natural language processing to improve the lecture of instructors in both MOOCs and traditional classes.


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