Processing of nominal compounds and gender-marked determiners in aphasia: Evidence from German

Abstract

The present study tests theories about the representation of compound nouns and grammatical gender in the mental lexicon. Comprehension and production of determiner-compound-noun phrases were examined in three aphasic native speakers of German, a language that marks grammatical gender on definite determiners of nouns. In picture naming, participants were more impaired in retrieving compounds than matched simple nouns and showed different error patterns. However, retrieving the correct determiner was equally impaired for compounds and simple nouns. Clear dissociations between impaired determiner retrieval in production and relatively preserved processing of determiner-noun phrases in comprehension were observed for existing compounds and simple nouns. In contrast, processing of novel compounds was more impaired in both modalities, and gender-mismatch effects were especially observed for novel compounds. The results support the account of decomposed word forms and holistic lemma representations of compound nouns in the mental lexicon.

Semantically Transparent and Opaque Compounds in German Noun-Phrase Production: Evidence for Morphemes in Speaking

“…Following this, gender of the modifier constituent of noun-noun compound targets should not affect compound production. The absence of a main effect of gender match of the constituent nouns is in line with this view (for similar evidence from aphasia, see Lorenz and Zwitserlood, 2014; see also Lorenz et al, under review).…”

“…Norms for semantic transparency were obtained by means of a rating with 70 native speakers of German (see Lorenz and Zwitserlood, 2014, for details). The semantic transparency of compounds was evaluated separately in relation to each constituent.…”

“…Thus, on the single-lemma account, grammatical features of the modifier, such as its grammatical gender, should not affect compound production. However, the single-lemma view has only rarely been tested (but see Lorenz et al, under review; Lüttmann et al, 2011a; Lorenz and Zwitserlood, 2014). …”

“…Furthermore, evidence from aphasia mainly points to decomposed lexical form representations in speech production (Semenza et al, 1997, 2011; Blanken, 2000; Badecker, 2001; Lorenz and Zwitserlood, 2014; Lorenz et al, 2014). In favor of decomposition are specific difficulties in the naming of compounds compared to matched simple nouns, such as more errors with compounds than simple nouns, and constituent errors with compound targets in picture naming.…”

“…It is still unresolved, however, whether these effects also occur in production paradigms, such as picture naming. In a study with German aphasic participants, we compared picture-naming accuracy for same-gender and different-gender noun-noun compound targets (Lorenz and Zwitserlood, 2014). Participants were instructed to name pictures with determiner-compound noun phrases, and thus a gender-marked determiner had to be retrieved in addition to the compound target (e.g., das neut Vogelhaus neut [the birdhouse]).…”