Dominiek Sandra

Compound fracture: The role of semantic transparency and morphological headedness

This paper explores the role of semantic transparency in the representation and processing of English compounds. We focus on the question of whether semantic transparency is best viewed as a property of the entire multimorphemic string or as a property of constituent morphemes. Accordingly, we investigated the processing of English compound nouns that were categorized in terms of the semantic transparency of each of their constituents. Fully transparent such as bedroom are those in which the meanings of each of the constituents are transparently represented in the meaning of the compound as a whole. These compounds were contrasted with compounds such as strawberry, in which only the second constituent is semantically transparent, jailbird, in which only the first constituent is transparent, and hogwash, in which neither constituent is semantically transparent. We propose that significant insights can be achieved through such analysis of the transparency of individual morphemes. The two experiments that we report present evidence that both semantically transparent compounds and semantically opaque compounds show morphological constituency. The semantic transparency of the morphological head (the second constituent in a morphologically right-headed language such as English) was found to play a significant role in overall lexical decision latencies, in patterns of decomposition, and in the effects of stimulus repetition within the experiment.

On the representation and processing of compound words: Automatic access to constituent morphemes does not occur

Three lexical decision experiments using a variant of the semantic priming technique tested the hypothesis that compound words are morphologically decomposed during recognition. If a compound constituent is accessed during processing, an associative prime will facilitate that access and hence recognition of the whole word. Contrary to the predictions derived from the automatic decomposition hypothesis, Experiment 1 revealed no priming effects for semantically opaque compounds (buttercup) and pseudo-compounds (boycott), primed either on their initial or final constituent. The data from Experiment 2 suggested that both constituents in semantically transparent compounds are accessed (teaspoon). Experiment 3 was a replication experiment, confirming that final constituents of opaque compounds are not accessed, whereas those of transparent compounds are. The overall pattern of data refutes the notion of automatic morphological decomposition proposed by Taft and Forster (1976). However, a revised decomposition procedure would be compatible with the results. Morphemes might only be accessed if no other lexical representations match the orthographic description of the parsed stimulus part. In this account, only semantically transparent compounds lack an independent lexical representation.

Masked cross-modal morphological priming: Unravelling morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic influences in early word recognition

Two experiments examined priming from semantically transparent and opaque suffix-derivations (including pseudo-derived words such as corner), using the masked cross-modal priming technique. Experiment 1 showed that in a Dutch lexical decision task, latencies to root targets were facilitated when visually presented primes were transparent derivations of the target, regardless of whether targets were presented visually or auditorily. Pseudo-derivations only provided weak evidence for priming and only when targets were presented visually. In Experiment 2 we tested transparent and opaque priming more thoroughly in a French lexical decision task by using the incremental priming technique in combination with a psychophysical approach. The results showed that opaque as well as transparent derivations facilitated the visual and auditory processing of their (pseudo-) root. However, transparent priming occurred earlier than opaque priming in the visual modality. Moreover, when facilitation from opaque derivations appeared in the visual modality, transparent derivations produced a larger facilitation effect. We argue that our findings illustrate the existence of two distinct processing systems underlying early morphological processing: a morpho-orthographic system and a morpho-semantic system.

Semantic transparency and masked morphological priming: the case of prefixed words.

In four lexical decision experiments, we investigated masked morphological priming with Dutch prefixed words. Reliable effects of morphological relatedness were obtained with visual primes and visual targets in the absence of effects due to pure form overlap. In certain conditions, priming effects were significantly greater with semantically transparent prefixed primes (e.g., rename-name) relative to the priming effects obtained with semantically opaque prefixed words (e.g., relate-late), even with very brief (40-msec) prime durations. With visual primes and auditory targets (cross-modal priming), significant facilitation was found in all related prime conditions, independent of whether or not primes were morphologically related to targets. The results are interpreted within a bimodal hierarchical model of word recognition in which morphological effects arise through the interplay of sublexical (morpho-orthographic) and supralexical (morpho-semantic) representations. The word stimuli from this study may be downloaded as supplemental materials from http://mc.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.

The morphology of the mental lexicon: Internal word structure viewed from a psycholinguistic perspective

Abstract A conceptual analysis is made of several ways in which the morphological structure of words might enter their lexical representation and/or processing. Economising on storage space seems an attractive option in light of the linguistic definition of the morpheme. However, for several word types, problems would arise in the mapping of morphs onto morphemes and of morphemic meanings onto whole-word meanings. Moreover, economy is a legal option, which might not be available to the mental lexicon. Alternatively, morphs might be put to the purpose of increasing lexical access speed, as proposed by Taft and Forster (1975) in their prefix-stripping model. It is demonstrated that such a view strips morphology from virtually all of its linguistic aspects. Furthermore, the prefix-stripping model would decrease rather than increase the access speed for several types of prefixed words in a number of languages. Linguistically interesting hypotheses are instantiated by the view that affixes are used for providi...

Beyond implicit phonological knowledge: No support for an onset-rime structure in children's explicit phonological awareness.

Abstract The importance of the onset–rime structure in phonological awareness is widely accepted. We focused on Dutch-speaking children’s explicit awareness. Four experiments failed to support the relevance of the onset–rime distinction in this domain. First, prereaders and first-graders found it easier to segment two-phoneme syllables within the rime VC (e.g., / o ː t / ), than between onset and rime in the reversed CV (e.g., / to ː/ ). Second, prereaders did not find it easier to substitute a phoneme in a CV than in a VC. Third, when first-graders were required to segment CVCs, CV strings were left intact more frequently than rimes. Thus, Dutch-speaking children did not treat onsets and rimes as cohesive units of the syllable in tasks tapping explicit awareness. Phonetic factors may play an important role in determining cohesion between phonemes.

Why simple verb forms can be so difficult to spell : The influence of homophone frequency and distance in Dutch

Two experiments are reported in which the determinants of spelling errors on homophonous verb forms in Dutch were studied. Both experiments indicated that errors were determined by the frequency relationship between the two homophonous forms and the distance between the verb and the word determining its spelling. We propose an interference model for spelling in which a phonologically driven retrieval process is the locus of the frequency effect and a morphosyntactically driven computational component can account for the distance effect. Alternative explanations are also explored.

Homophonic Forms of Regularly Inflected Verbs Have Their Own Orthographic Representations: A Developmental Perspective on Spelling Errors

In previous research (Sandra, Frisson, & Daems, 1999) we demonstrated that experienced writers of Dutch (18-year-olds) make spelling errors on regularly inflected homophonic verb forms. Intrusion errors, i.e., spelling of the homophonic alternative, occurred more often when the low-frequency homophone had to be written. In the present article we report error data for three groups of less experienced spellers, who have not yet fully mastered the rules for verb suffix spelling: 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and 14-year-olds. Younger spellers obviously make many more errors than experienced ones. Whereas this is in part due to inadequate rule mastery/application, their error patterns are also clearly influenced by the frequency relationship between the homophonic forms, i.e., the same factor accounting for the errors of experienced spellers. The conclusion of our present and past research is that homophonic forms of regularly inflected verbs have their own orthographic representations in the mental lexicon and that these representations cause interference in writing (spelling errors), whereas they might cause facilitation in reading (a claim made by dual-route models of reading).

Dutch Plural Inflection: The Exception that Proves the Analogy.

We develop the view that inflection is driven partly by non-phonological analogy and that non-phonological information is of particular importance to the inflection of non-canonical roots, which in the view of [Marcus, G. F., Brinkmann, U., Clahsen, H., Wiese, R., & Pinker, S. (1995). German inflection: the exception that proves the rule. Cognitive Psychology, 29, 189-256.] are inflected by a symbolic rule process. We used the Dutch plural to evaluate these claims. An analysis of corpus data shows that a model using non-phonological information (orthography) produces significantly fewer errors on plurals of non-canonical Dutch nouns, in particular borrowings, than a model that includes only phonological information. Moreover, we show that a double default system, as proposed by Pinker [Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules. London: Phoenix.], does not offer an advantage over the latter model. A second study, examining the use of orthography in an online plural production task, shows that, in Dutch, the chosen pseudoword plural is significantly affected by non-phonological information. A final simulation study confirms that these results are in line with a model of inflectional morphology that explains the inflection of non-canonical roots by non-phonological analogy instead of by a default rule process.

Segmenting two-phoneme syllables: developmental differences in relation with early reading skills.

This study explored developmental differences in childrens segmentation skills of VC and CV syllables (e.g., /af/ and /fa/) in relation to their early reading abilities. To this end, we followed a subgroup of Dutch speaking prereaders who participated in, and replicated the segmentation task in first grade, at the outset of phonics reading instruction. Reading abilities were assessed after 6 and 9 months. First, we confirmed that VCs offer an easier context to isolate phonemes than CVs. Second, matching analyses showed that this development from VC to CV segmentation posed comparatively increasing difficulties for poor segmenters. Third, this qualitatively different development was reflected in early reading performance. Our data emphasize the importance of phonetic factors and instruction-based experiences in phonological development.