Jussi Niemi

Cognitive morphology in finnish: Foundations of a new model

Abstract We summarise the main results from a series of Finnish studies dealing with single-word experiments with aphasics as well as lexical decision and eye-movement registration tests performed on normals. On the basis of our experimental results, we propose a processing model of Finnish nouns. For the input and central lexicons, this Stem Allomorph/Inflectional Decomposition (SAID) model assumes morphological decomposition of inflected (with the exception of the most frequently encountered inflected noun forms) but not derived noun forms. For the output lexicon, it predicts that both inflected and productive derived forms have decomposed representations. In the case of marked stem variation (resulting from stem formation and/or morphophonological alternation), the model assumes that the stems are represented by their allomorphs, and not by a single morph. In this respect, our model postulates more suppletion in the input/output lexicons than would be predicted on the basis of formal morphological anal...

The effects of attention on speech perception: an fMRI study.

Focusing of attention to a specific speech source plays an important role in everyday speech perception. However, little is known of the neuronal substrates of focused attention in speech perception. Thus, the present study investigated the effects on neuronal activation of directed attention to auditory stimuli that differed in semantic content. Using an event-related fMRI protocol, single vowels, three-phoneme pseudowords and three- and four-phoneme real nouns and words were randomly presented to the subjects during four different instructional conditions. One condition was passive listening without any specific instructions of focusing of attention. The other conditions were attention focused on either the vowels, the pseudowords or the words. Thus, the acoustic stimulation was constant across conditions. The subjects were 13 healthy adults. Functional MRI was performed with a 1.5 T scanner, using an event-related design. During passive listening, there were significant activations bilaterally in the superior temporal gyrus. Instruction to attend to the pseudowords caused activation in middle temporal lobe areas, extending more anterior compared to the activations seen during passive listening. Instruction to attend to the vowel sounds caused an increase in activation in the superior/medial temporal lobe, with a leftward asymmetry. Instruction to attend to the words caused a leftward asymmetry, particularly in the middle and superior temporal gyri. It is concluded that attention plays a modulatory role in neuronal activation to speech sounds, producing specific activations to specific stimulus categories that may act to facilitate speech perception.

Morphological processing of polymorphemic nouns in a highly inflecting language

Abstract We explored the processing of morphologically complex nouns in an aphasic who is a native speaker of Finnish, a language with rich morphology. This patient made numerous morphological errors with inflected nouns in oral reading, repetition, and word elicitation. In contrast, reading and repetition of both base form and derived nouns was significantly better. The cross-modal nature of his morphological difficulties together with other experimental evidence for a semantic impairment indicated that a central deficit played a significant role in his problems with inflected nouns. This suggests a difference in the processing of inflectional vs. derivational morphology at the semantic level. In addition, the patient occasionally produced illegal stem + affix combinations. As these errors appeared in the absence of phonological paraphasias, they support the view that the phonological output lexicon has a morpheme-based organisation in Finnish. Finally, it was hypothesised that the stem representations o...

A neurolinguistic analysis of morphological deficits in a Finnish-Swedish bilingual aphasic

A bilingual aphasic with phonological dyslexia produced morphological paralexias when reading inflected Finnish and Swedish words. In both languages, derivatives were read as well as base-form nouns, whereas inflected forms posed difficulties. This suggests that inflected forms require additional processing like morphological decomposition during lexical access. Both Finnish and Swedish error corpora included occasional morphologically illegal stem + affix combinations, indicating that in lexical retrieval she was employing a morphologically decomposed phonological output lexicon. Her oral reading performance was not sensitive to the formal transparency of inflection, but in word elicitation the formally most opaque forms turned out to be most difficult to generate. An interesting finding in oral reading was our aphasics tendency to substitute one affixed form for another in Finnish (a morphologically rich language) but to resort to monomorphemic forms in Swedish (a morphologically limited language). How...

Brain correlates of sentence translation in Finnish-Norwegian bilinguals.

We measured brain activation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while Finnish–Norwegian bilinguals silently translated sentences from Finnish into Norwegian and decided whether a later presented probe sentence was a correct translation of the original sentence. The control task included silent sentence reading and probe sentence decision within a single language, Finnish. The translation minus control task contrast activated the left inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmanns area 47) and the left basal ganglia. The left inferior frontal activation appears to be related to active semantic retrieval and the basal ganglia activation to a general action control function that works by suppressing competing responses.

Adaptation of the Boston diagnostic aphasia examination and the boston naming test into finnish

We have adapted two widely used aphasia tests, the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination (BDAE) and the Boston Naming Test (BNT), to the Finnish language. The BDAE is the first extensive standardized aphasia test battery that will be published in Finnish. The test adaptations as well as reliability and validity information of the Finnish BDAE version are described. The Finnish versions of both BDAE and BNT are expected to gain widespread use among speech therapists and neuropsychologists working with Finnish-speaking subjects.

Effects Of A Word’s Morphological Complexity On Readers’ Eye Fixation Patterns

Abstract In the present study morphological processing during word recognition was examined by employing the lexical decision and naming tasks in combination with eye movement registration. Three types of nouns with different morphological complexity were used: monomorphemic base-form nouns, and two types of multimorphemic nouns - derived and inflected. Subjects were asked to look at each word as long as they needed to be able to name it aloud (Expt. 1) or make a lexical decision (Expt. 2) to it. The results showed that inflected words attracted longer first and second fixations than derived or base-form words. On the other hand, the fixation frequency was lower for the inflected words than for the other wordtypes. The morphological effect was not found to interact with the experimental task. The study lends support to the view that some morphological parsing takes place during lexical access. Moreover, the results are in accordance with the SAID (Stem Allomorph/Inflectional Decomposition) model proposed by Laine, Niemi, Koivuselka-Sallinen, Ahlsen and Hyona (in press), according to which a speaker of Finnish represents and accesses inflected words in a morphologically decomposed form, while derived words are accessed as single entities.

Counterintuitive Cross-Linguistic Differences: More Morphological Computation in English Than in Finnish

This study investigates the role of derivational morphology in lexical processing in two typologically quite different languages: Finnish and English. While Finnish is a language with an extremely rich morphology, English morphology is relatively poor. Consequently, the role of morphology in storing and processing words would be expected to be greater in Finnish than in English. With a series of visual lexical decision experiments in both languages, we find that the opposite is the case for derivational morphology: for English, parsing of morphological constituents is often required, whereas for Finnish, full-form storage and access seems to be the rule. We try to explain this counterintuitive finding by making an appeal to the lexical-statistical properties of both languages.

Affixal salience and the processing of derivational morphology: The role of suffix allomorphy

This study explores the relevance of suffix allomorphy for processing complex words. The question is whether structural invariance of the morphological category (i.e., lack of allomorphy) would affect the processing of Finnish derived words. A series of four visual lexical decision experiments in which alternatively surface and base frequency was manipulated showed that the two invariant suffixes, namely denominal –stO and deadjectival –hkO, showed reliable effects of base frequency, whereas for the two categories with suffix allomorphy, deverbal –Us and deadjectival –(U)Us, only surface frequency played a role. A further experiment showed that even with the most frequent variant of –(U)Us, namely –Ude-, response latencies were a function of surface frequency only. It is shown that neither the results from the experiments here nor previous findings from processing Finnish words can be accounted for by suffix frequency, the frequency ratio between the derived word and its base, or morphological productivity in any straightforward manner. We conclude that the lack of allomorphy, that is, structural invariance, significantly adds to affixal salience and therefore enhances morphological decomposition. The implications of this finding for models of lexical processing are discussed.

Grammar and Lexicon in Facilitated Communication: A Linguistic Authorship Analysis of a Finnish Case

This case study adds a new dimension to the discourse on the authorship issue in facilitated communication. The linguistic structure produced by a young Finnish man with severe cerebral palsy was examined. Data are based on transcripts he produced from 1993 until 1996 after facilitated communication had been introduced to him. In the data analysis, as explicit criteria for his idiosyncrasies, we used patterns typical of children acquiring Finnish as their first language and those found in normal slips of the tongue, acquired aphasia, and specific language impairment. Based on the analysis (i.e. the idiosyncrasy and agrammaticality of word-forms and sentences), we strongly suggest that his output can hardly be a product of any other speaker of Finnish, including that of his facilitators.