Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon

Abstract

We present results from cross-modal priming experiments on German participles and noun plurals. The experiments produced parallel results for both inflectional systems. Regular inflection exhibits full priming whereas irregularly inflected word forms show only partial priming: after hearing regularly inflected words (-t participles and -s plurals), lexical decision times on morphologically related word forms (presented visually) were similar to reaction times for a base-line condition in which prime and target were identical, but significantly shorter than in a control condition where prime and target were unrelated. In contrast, prior presentation of irregular words (-n participles and -er plurals) led to significantly longer response times on morphologically related word forms than the prior presentation of the target itself. Hence, there are clear priming differences between regularly and irregularly inflected German words. We compare the findings on German with experimental results on regular and irregular inflection in English and Italian, and discuss theoretical implications for single versus dual-mechanism models of inflection.

Interpreting dissociations between regular and irregular past-tense morphology: Evidence from event-related potentials

“…As mentioned previously, this delayed-priming technique has a different pattern of results compared to immediate priming with regard to regular and irregular verbs. In behavioral studies using this design, a pattern of greater priming for the regulars has been (inconsistently) observed (Stanners et al, 1979;Napps, 1989;Sonnenstuhl et al, 1999;cf. Fowler, Napps, & Feldman, 1985;Hanson & Wilkenfeld, 1985).…”

“…The debate has broader relevance for cognitive science, given that the dual-route model is associated with a propositional, symbol-manipulating view of cognition (Marcus, 2001), whereas the single-route model has been driven by the development of connectionism and neural-network modeling. For the neuropsychologist, the past-tense controversy is of interest given the important role that cognitive and neural dissociations have played in fueling the debate; dissociations between regular and irregular morphology have been observed in data from acquisition (Brown, 1973;Kuczaj, 1977), psycholinguistics (Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, & Hall, 1979;Kempley & Morton, 1982;Napps, 1989;Sonnenstuhl, Eisenbeiss, & Clahsen, 1999), neuropsychology (Ullman et al, 1997;Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, 1997;Tyler, de Mornay Davies, et al, 2002), neuroimaging (Jaeger et al, 1996;Beretta et al, 2003;Sahin, Pinker, & Halgren, 2006;de Diego Balaguer et al, 2006), and electrophysiology (Münte, Say, Clahsen, Schiltz, & Kutas, 1999;Weyerts, Münte, Smid, & Heinze, 1996). In fact, the past-tense debate is largely one of how to interpret cognitive and neural dissociations.…”

Morphological Priming in Spanish Verb Forms: An ERP Repetition Priming Study

“…''walk'') than irregular ones (''came'' ! ''come'') (Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, & Hall, 1979; see also Sonnenstuhl, Eisenbeiss, & Clahsen, 1999;MarslenWilson & Tyler, 1997). Assuming that part of the repetition priming effect reflects facilitated access to its lexical entry upon second exposure, these priming differences seem congruent with ideas postulated by the dual-mechanism model: Regularly inflected word forms are processed via their constituent morphemes and thereby directly access the same lexical entry as the target forms; hence, they are more effective primes for their corresponding base forms than irregular ones that access their own lexical entries and can therefore prime their corresponding base forms only indirectly.…”

Suffix interference in Russian

“…The phenomenon has been observed in English (Marslen-Wilson et. al, 1994;Marslen-Wilson, Zhou, & Ford, 1996;Marslen-Wilson & Zhou, 1999) and German (Sonnenstuhl, Eisenbeiss, & Clahsen, 1999). Yet studies in Dutch (Zwitserlood, Bolwiender, & Drews, 1995;Zwitserlood, Drews, & Bolwiender, 2002) and French (Meunier, Marslen-Wilson, & Ford, 2000) have failed to produce suffix interference.…”