Search results for "Morpheme"
showing 10 items of 19 documents
Do transposed-letter similarity effects occur at a morpheme level? Evidence for morpho-orthographic decomposition
2007
When does morphological decomposition occur in visual word recognition? An increasing body of evidence suggests the presence of early morphological processing. The present work investigates this issue via an orthographic similarity manipulation. Three masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to examine the transposed-letter similarity effect (e.g., jugde facilitates JUDGE more than the control jupbe) in polymorphemic and monomorphemic words. If morphological decomposition occurs at early stages of visual word recognition, we would expect an interaction with transposed-letter effects. Experiment 1 was carried out in Basque, which is an agglutinative language. The nonword pr…
Structural priming is supported by different components of nondeclarative memory: Evidence from priming across the lifespan
2017
Abstract Structural priming is the tendency to repeat syntactic structure across sentences and can be divided into short-term (prime to immediately following target) and long-term (across an experimental session) components. Current theories of structural priming propose that different memory systems support these components, however, this study investigates how non-declarative memory could support both the transient, short-term and the persistent, long-term structural priming effects commonly seen in the literature. We propose that these characteristics are supported by different subcomponents of non-declarative memory: Perceptual and conceptual non-declarative memory respectively. Previou…
Syntax and conversation in aphasia. A strategic restrictive use of Spanish and Catalan connector QUE by aphasic speakers.
2009
Oral conversational data are deemed to be a relevant empirical source when it comes to formulating and supporting hypotheses about cognitive processes involved in aphasic linguistic production. With this assumption in mind, free conversational uses of the Spanish and Catalan connector QUE by fluent and non-fluent aphasic speakers are examined by contrasting them with normal speakers' (i.e. conversational partners') productions. Strictly ungrammatical uses in aphasic speakers are practically non-existent in free conversation. Nevertheless, this data permits one to characterize the aphasic production of the morpheme QUE as restrictive--to different degrees--with respect to normal production. …
THE EXPRESSION OF EVIDENTIALITY IN SPOKEN AND WRITTEN TEXTS: EMPIRICAL APPROACHES TO ROMANCE LANGUAGES
2020
Evidentiality is a grammatical category that encodes information source as its primary meaning. The information can be: acquired through direct perception, reported by others (hearsay) or inferred by the speaker upon considering the information that is available. Languages with an evidential grammatical category have morphemes with a primary evidential value (Aikhenvald 2004). Nevertheless, Romance languages, like many other languages, have a tense- modal system and lack an evidential grammatical category, instead of which several lexical units or certain constructions convey information source. This special issue is devoted to some of those items, such as modal adverbs, evidential meanings…
Effects of reading proficiency and of base and whole-word frequency on reading noun- and verb-derived words: An eye-tracking study in Italian primary…
2018
The aim of this study is to assess the role of readers’ proficiency and of the base-word distributional properties on eye-movement behavior. Sixty-two typically developing children, attending 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, were asked to read derived words in a sentence context. Target words were nouns derived from noun bases (e.g., umorista, ‘humorist’), which in Italian are shared by few derived words, and nouns derived from verb bases (e.g., punizione, ‘punishment’), which are shared by about 50 different inflected forms and several derived words. Data shows that base and word frequency affected first-fixation duration for nouns derived from noun bases, but in an opposite way: base frequency ha…
Grammaticalization in Slavic languages
2012
Abstract This article examines the grammaticalisation developments in Slavic languages. The functions of the past tenses lost in northern Slavic are only partially covered by the younger opposition of perfective and imperfective aspect. The only new classes of morphemes that arose in some sub-areas of Slavic are the definite and the indefinite article, both with preliminary, not-yet-grammaticalised stages in some more Slavic varieties. In sum, in Slavic grammaticalization, phenomena have occurred predominantly in the realm of verbal categories; only very few phenomena are related to the noun phrase.
The hidden side of adverbs
2018
This paper will address the predicative nature of manner adverb(ial)s and of three types of sentence adverbs (subject-oriented, modal, and evaluative) in Italian. Predication often becomes overt by means of morphological correlates. Is it possible to find any such evidence with invariable adverbs? To unveil their predicative nature, a procedure will be suggested in which two sentences, one with a -mente adverb, the other with its cognate adjective (a) share the content morphemes (identity of the signifiant) and (b) entail each other (identity of the signifié as regards semantic roles). A number of such pairs will be discussed, examples of which include: Intelligentemente, Leo intervenne ‘Cl…
Word-Formation and Contextualism
2014
While there is, under the heading of “morphopragmatics”, some research on the relation of pragmatics and word-formation, especially with a focus on diminutives, the major theoretical models of word-formation do not account for the word-formation/pragmatics interface in any systematic fashion. Moreover, in recent contextualist approaches to the semantics/pragmatics interface, the typical grammatical unit referred to is the sentence (including words that constitute a sentence), but not word structure or the morpheme. Drawing on morphological data from German, I will show the influence of pragmatic processes and principles on word-formation, arguing that word structures are also units that may…
Anatomy of a grammatical tone
2018
Abstract“Induced Creaky Tone (ICT)” is a grammatical tone in Burmese. It is the result of a process by which Low or High tone is changed into Creaky tone. This alternation is multifunctional, and one of its functions is possessor marking. This paper demonstrates several well-distinguished conditions of different nature and different domain for this tonal alternation. ICT is primarily induced by syntax, varies due to pragmatic factors, occurs only on the shared right boundary of phrases and stem forms, and its phonological condition has a domain stretching to the left boundary of the prosodic word. A comprehensive account of such conditions provides the basis for a grammatical analysis which…
On the loss of vitality of diminutive in French
2012
El presente artículo trata el tema de la pérdida de vitalidad del diminutivo en lengua francesa, muy inferior a otras lenguas románicas. El autor le presta especial atención al uso de este morfema en el español, donde sí que presenta una mayor frecuencia. El diminutivo del francés se habría lexicalizado y habría perdido su vitalidad. El presente artículo trata el tema de la pérdida de vitalidad del diminutivo en lengua francesa, muy inferior a otras lenguas románicas. El autor le presta especial atención al uso de este morfema en el español, donde sí que presenta una mayor frecuencia. El diminutivo del francés se habría lexicalizado y habría perdido su vitalidad. This paper considers the su…