Different selection principles of freestanding and bound morphemes in language production.

Abstract

Freestanding and bound morphemes differ in many (psycho)linguistic aspects. Some theorists have claimed that the representation and retrieval of freestanding and bound morphemes in the course of language production are governed by similar processing mechanisms. Alternatively, it has been proposed that both types of morphemes may be selected for production in different ways. In this article, the authors first review the available experimental evidence related to this topic and then present new experimental data pointing to the notion that freestanding and bound morphemes are retrieved following distinct processing principles: freestanding morphemes are subject to competition, bound morphemes not.

Selection of freestanding and bound gender-marking morphemes in speech production: a review

“…A second important aspect of the study by Bordag and Pechmann relates to the fact that in the bound morpheme condition (hard declension, for which effects were observed) the response set was large, consisting of two different stems (druh-[second] and pát-[fifth]) and three different suffixes (ý masc , -á fem , and -é neuter ), resulting in six different versions of the word carrying the gendermarking bound morpheme. This makes the study similar to the one by Schriefers (1993); five stems and two different suffixes), who likewise found an effect for bound morphemes, and different from the studies by Costa et al (2003) and Schiller and Costa (2006) (only two alternatives), who did not find a corresponding effect.…”

“…Second, there is a robust gender-congruency effect for freestanding morphemes, while the gender-congruency effect for bound morphemes is more fragile. Some studies used a large response set for the words carrying the gender-marking bound morpheme (Bordag & Pechmann, 2008;Schriefers, 1993) and did find a gender-congruency effect for bound morphemes, other studies using a small response set (Costa et al, 2003;Schiller & Caramazza, 2003;Schiller & Costa, 2006) did not find a gender-congruency effect for bound morphemes. This pattern might suggest that response set size could be a critical variable here.…”

“…Yet in another study, Schiller and Costa (2006) addressed the question of differences in the processing of freestanding versus bound gender-marked morphemes in German. Two of the three German gender classes were tested, namely masculine and feminine.…”

“…According to one position, both freestanding and bound morphemes follow the same selection mechanism, namely selection by competition (e.g., Bordag & Pechmann, 2008;Schriefers, 1993;Schriefers, Jescheniak, & Hantsch, 2002). According to a second position, freestanding morphemes are selected by competition, while the production of gender-inflected bound morphemes involves a noncompetitive transformation process of a base form (e.g., Schiller & Caramazza, 2003;Schiller & Costa, 2006).…”

The determiner congruency effect in language production investigated with functional MRI

“…This effect was termed the ''gender congruency effect'' in language production. Since the work of Schriefers [1993], this effect has been replicated in several behavioural studies in Germanic languages [Dutch: 2006;La Heij et al, 1998;Schiller and Caramazza 2003;Schiller and Caramazza 2003;Schiller and Costa 2006;Van Berkum, 1997;German: Schriefers and Teruel 2000] and in Croatian [Costa et al, 2003]. 1 In the literature, there are two alternative hypotheses for the origin of the gender congruency effect locating the effect at different levels in the process of language production.…”