Search results for "lexical"
showing 10 items of 271 documents
Bengali nasal vowels: Lexical representation and listener perception
2022
This paper focuses on the question of the representation of nasality as well as speakers’ awareness and perceptual use of phonetic nasalisation by examining surface nasalisation in two types of vowels in Bengali: underlying nasal vowels (CṼC) and nasalised vowels before a nasal consonant (CVN). A series of three cross-modal forced-choice experiments was used to investigate the hypothesis that only unpredictable nasalisation is stored and that this sparse representation governs how listeners interpret vowel nasality. Visual full-word targets were preceded by auditory primes consisting of CV segments of CVC words with nasal vowels ([tʃɑ̃] for [tʃɑ̃d] ‘moon’), oral vowels ([tʃɑ] for [tʃɑl] ‘un…
Resolving the locus of cAsE aLtErNaTiOn effects in visual word recognition: Evidence from masked priming.
2015
Determining the factors that modulate the early access of abstract lexical representations is imperative for the formulation of a comprehensive neural account of visual-word identification. There is a current debate on whether the effects of case alternation (e.g., tRaIn vs. train) have an early or late locus in the word-processing stream. Here we report a lexical decision experiment using a technique that taps the early stages of visual-word recognition (i.e., masked priming). In the design, uppercase targets could be preceded by an identity/unrelated prime that could be in lowercase or alternating case (e.g., table-TABLE vs. crash-TABLE; tAbLe-TABLE vs. cRaSh-TABLE). Results revealed that…
Spoken word recognition with gender-marked context.
2006
In a cross-modal (auditory-visual) fragment priming study in French, we tested the hypothesis that gender information given by a gender-marked article (e.g. unmasculine or unefeminine) is used early in the recognition of the following word to discard gender-incongruent competitors. In four experiments, we compared lexical decision performances on targets primed by phonological information only (e.g. /kRa/-CRAPAUD /kRapo/; /to/-TOAD) or by phonological plus gender information given by a gender-marked article (e.g. unmasculine /kra/-CRAPAUD; a /to/-TOAD). In all experiments, we found a phonological priming effect that was not modulated by the presence of gender context, whether gender-marked …
Psycholinguistic variables in visual word recognition and pronunciation of European Portuguese words: a mega-study approach
2019
An increasing number of psycholinguistic studies have adopted a megastudy approach to explore the role that different variables play in the speed and/or accuracy with which words are recognised and/or pronounced in different languages. However, despite evidence for deep and shallow orthographies, little is known about the role that several orthographic, phonological and semantic variables play in visual word recognition and word production of words from intermediate-depth languages, as European Portuguese (EP). The current study aimed to overcome this gap, by collecting lexical decision and naming data for a large pool of words selected to closely represent the diversity of the EP language.…
Lexical cohesion revisited. A combined corpus and systemic-functional analysis
2018
In this chapter I argue for a refinement of the classic SFL approach to lexical cohesion. First, a literature overview is provided in which key principles and related categories are examined. In addition, the connection of cohesion and discourse co-herence is addressed and an overview is provided of the wide range of applications that the former has in such fields as genre studies, language teaching and learning, psycholinguistics and computational linguistics, among others. The core SFL models of cohesion are then revisited in order to propose a modified taxonomy of lexical co-hesion, involving five distinct types (repetition, synonymy, opposition, inclusion and association) that are cross…
Doesdarknesslead tohappiness? Masked suffix priming effects
2008
Masked affix priming effects have usually been obtained for words sharing the initial affix (e.g., re action- RE FORM). However, prior evidence on masked suffix priming effects (e.g., bak er -WALK ER ) is inconclusive. In the present series of masked priming lexical decision experiments, a target word was briefly preceded by a morphologically or orthographically related prime, or by an unrelated prime. In Experiment 1, the prime words in the suffix priming condition were formed by their suffixes (e.g., er -WALK ER ). In Experiment 2, the primes included the suffix inserted in a nonsense symbol string (e.g., %%%% er -WALK ER ). In Experiment 3, the primes were formed by a real word that shar…
Masked associative/semantic priming effects across languages with highly proficient bilinguals
2008
One key issue for models of bilingual memory is to what degree the semantic representation from one of the languages is shared with the other language. In the present paper, we examine whether there is an early, automatic semantic priming effect across languages for noncognates with highly proficient (Basque/Spanish) bilinguals. Experiment 1 was a between-language masked semantic priming lexical decision experiment. Results showed a significant between-language semantic priming effect for both Basque–Spanish and Spanish–Basque pairs. Experiment 2 showed that the magnitude of the between-language and within-language masked semantic priming effects was quite similar. Experiment 3 replicated t…
Precategoriality and syntax-based parts of speech
2008
Late Archaic Chinese is a precategorial language, i.e., a language whose lexical items are not preclassified in the lexicon for the syntactic functions of N and V. This will be shown on the basis of structural-conceptual criteria as those developed by Croft (2000) and Sasse (1993b) as well as on the basis of methodological criteria as those suggested by Evans & Osada (2005). As is claimed in Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2005), the meaning of lexical items is derived by integrating their own lexical meaning with the meaning contributed by the construction. The construction analysed in this paper is the argument structure construction. Linking between lexicon and syntax is subject…
Strength and weakness of the Old English adjective
2021
Abstract As regards Old English, the inflectional strength and weakness are characterised by a kind of inconsistency. In the case of Old English adjectives these two inflectional properties appear to be different from those associated with nouns and verbs. In the case of the latter the two properties seem to be lexically determined while in the case of adjectives they appear to be determined by syntactic conditions. The traditional accounts of the Old English grammar attribute two paradigms to one adjectival lexical item. The analysis presented in this article postulates that one can actually speak about one adjectival inflection and what is traditionally presented as strong and weak adject…
Evaluative meaning
2012
Linguistic evaluation has become an important area of inquiry in recent years. In the traditions of, e.g., lexical semantics, phraseology, corpus linguistics, and interactional linguistics, a large inventory of linguistic means have been identified by which speakers can express evaluative meanings. However, the class of German sentential idioms, e.g., Das kannst du dir in die Haare schmieren (lit. ‘You can smear that into your hair’, fig. ‘That is useless’), has not gained much attention. This paper explores how the evaluative meaning of German sentential idioms is constructed syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically. In particular, it is investigated how the meaning of these idioms i…