Hélène Giraudo

Differential processing effects within second group Modern Greek verbs

On-line processing of Greek 2nd group verbs was examined through a psycholinguistic experiment using the masked priming technique. The critical comparison concerned the effect of past tense primes on present tense targets between the two forms of the same verb: 2nd group basic verbs and their alternative forms. Results showed that alternative forms elicit morphological priming whereas basic forms do not, and this cannot be compatible with a decompositional approach. We propose an interpretation based on a lexematic approach within an interactive activation model (IAM, McClelland & Rumelhart, 1981). In the discussion, we underline the difficulty in avoiding methodological caveats when transferring logic and material constitution techniques (mostly based on orthographic-phonological criteria) directly from one language to another. The experiment presented here highlights the need to consider a given verbal system in its complexity when designing a psycholinguistic experiment.