6533b827fe1ef96bd1286f49

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Beyond decomposition: Processing zero-derivations in English visual word recognition

Aditi LahiriChristos PliatsikasDebra MalpassLinda WheeldonSwetlana Schuster

subject

Cognitive NeuroscienceSpeech recognitionExperimental and Cognitive PsychologyVerbNeuropsychological TestsVocabulary050105 experimental psychology03 medical and health sciencesPrime (symbol)0302 clinical medicineNounReaction TimeHumans0501 psychology and cognitive sciencesLanguageBrain Mapping05 social sciencesPart of speechZero (linguistics)SemanticsNeuropsychology and Physiological PsychologyPattern Recognition VisualCovertSuffixPsychologyPriming (psychology)030217 neurology & neurosurgeryPhotic Stimulation

description

Four experiments investigate the effects of covert morphological complexity during visual word recognition. Zero-derivations occur in English in which a change of word class occurs without any change in surface form (e.g., a boat-to boat; to soak-a soak). Boat is object-derived and is a basic noun (N), whereas soak is action-derived and is a basic verb (V). As the suffix {-ing} is only attached to verbs, deriving boating from its base, requires two steps, boat(N) > boat(V) > boating(V), while soaking can be derived in one step from soak(V). Experiments 1 to 3 used masked priming at different prime durations to test matched sets of one- and two-step verbs for morphological (soaking-SOAK) and semantic priming (jolting-SOAK). Experiment 4 employed a delayed-priming paradigm in which the full verb forms (soaking and boating) were primed by noun and verb phrases (a soak/to soak, a boat/to boat). In both paradigms, different morphological priming patterns were observed for one-step and two-step verbs, demonstrating that morphological processing cannot be reduced to surface form-based segmentation.

yearjournalcountryeditionlanguage
2019-01-01Cortex
10.1016/j.cortex.2018.09.003http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2018.09.003