Semantic transparency effects in German compounds: A large dataset and multiple-task investigation

Guenther, Fritz; Marelli, Marco; Bölte, Jens

doi:10.31234/osf.io/dwxb6

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…These findings are also in line with theoretical accounts of compound words such as the dual‐route (Pollatsek, Hyönä, & Bertram, 2000), multiple‐route (Kuperman, Schreuder, Bertram, & Baayen, 2009) and CAOSS (Composition as Abstract Operation in Semantic Space) ( Günther & Marelli, 2019, Günther, Marelli, & Bölte, 2020; Marelli, Gagne, & Spalding, 2017) models. The first two models posit that compound words are processed via both a compositional route, in which each constituent is identified separately and then combined to form the compound, and a direct lookup route that accesses a unified lexical entry for the whole compound.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Contrasting off‐line segmentation decisions with on‐line word segmentation during reading

Song

Chang

et al. 2021

British J of Psychology

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In two experiments, we investigated the correspondences between off‐line word segmentation and on‐line segmentation processing during Chinese reading. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to read sentences which contained critical four‐character strings, and then, they were required to segment the same sentences into words in a later off‐line word segmentation task. For each item, participants were split into 1‐word segmenters (who segmented four‐character strings as a single word) and 2‐word segmenters (who segmented four‐character strings as 2 two‐character words). Thus, we split participants into two groups (1‐word segmenters and 2‐word segmenters) according to their off‐line segmentation bias. The data analysis showed no reliable group effect on all the measures. In order to avoid the heterogeneity of participants and stimuli in Experiment 1, two groups of participants (1‐word segmenters and 2‐word segmenters) and three types of critical four‐character string (1‐word strings, ambiguous strings, and 2‐word strings) were identified in a norming study in Experiment 2. Participants were required to read sentences containing these critical strings. There was no reliable group effect in Experiment 2, as was the case in Experiment 1. However, in Experiment 2, participants spent less time and made fewer fixations on 1‐word strings compared to ambiguous and 2‐word strings. These results indicate that the off‐line word segmentation preferences do not necessarily reflect on‐line word segmentation processing during Chinese reading and that Chinese readers exhibit flexibility such that word, or multiple constituent, segmentation commitments are made on‐line.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Contrasting off‐line segmentation decisions with on‐line word segmentation during reading

Song

Chang

et al. 2021

British J of Psychology

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“…At the surface level, compounds can take different forms, and the variations seen in forms mostly depend upon the language in question. In German, compounds are consistently written as a single string/single word (Günther et al, 2020;Zwitserlood et al, 2002). In English, compounds are made of free lexemes, and typically a combination of two or more constituent words (Dressler, 2006), which results in single lexicalized expressions (Juhasz et al, 2003)-compare for example tree house in English with Baumhaus in German.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In English, German or Dutch, compound words are right-headed (Koester & Schiller, 2008), that is to say that the second constituent (rightmost) determines the semantic category and the morphosyntactic features of the whole compound-it serves as the head (Juhasz, 2018). The first constituent serves as a modifier which further specifies the meaning as, for instance, in airport, which is a kind of port dedicated to travel by air (Günther et al, 2020). In Bulgarian, compounds are always right-headed (Jarema et al, 1999).…”

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confidence: 99%

Psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words

2021

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Compounds are morphologically complex words made of different linguistic parts. They are very prevalent in a number of languages such as French. Different psycholinguistic characteristics of compounds have been used in certain studies to investigate the mechanisms involved in compound processing (see Table 7). We provide psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words. The words were normed on seven characteristics: lexeme meaning dominance, semantic transparency, sensory experience, conceptual familiarity, imageability, age of acquisition (AoA) and subjective frequency. Reliability measures were computed for the collected norms. Descriptive statistical analyses, and correlational and multiple regression analyses were performed. We also report some comparisons made between our normative data and certain norms obtained in other similar studies. The entire set of norms, which will be very useful to researchers investigating the processing of compounds, is available as Supplemental Material.

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“…In a previous study, Günther and Marelli (2016) demonstrated that the contributions of the constituent meanings to the combined meaning predict explicit sensibility ratings for compound words, including novel compounds (collected by Graves et al, 2013). However, it has been demonstrated that such off-line explicit ratings for complex words are not necessarily affected by the same semantic variable as, especially when only the latter ones are obtained under time pressure (Günther et al, in press; Marelli & Baroni, 2015). The present study therefore aims at systematically investigating how these constituent contributions affect the processing times of novel compounds.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In this distributional framework, the Compounding as Abstract Operation in Semantic Space (CAOSS) model (Marelli et al, 2017) is designed to compute the compositional meaning of compounds from its constituents (see the Methods section of Experiment 1). The contribution of either constituent to the compositional process is then measured as their respective similarity to this compositionally obtained representation (Günther & Marelli, 2016, 2019) The CAOSS model has been successfully established as predicting processing times in existing compounds (with higher constituent contributions resulting in faster processing; Günther et al, in press; Günther & Marelli, 2019) and relational effects in novel compounds (Gagné, 2001; Gagné & Shoben, 1997; as reported in Marelli et al, 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

Trying to make it work: Compositional effects in the processing of compound “nonwords”

Günther

Marelli

2020

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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Speakers of languages with synchronically productive compounding systems, such as English, are likely to encounter new compounds on a daily basis. These can only be useful for communication if speakers are able to rapidly compose their meanings. However, while compositional meanings can be obtained for some novel compounds such as bridgemill, this is far harder for others such as radiosauce; accordingly, processing speed should be affected by the ease of such a compositional process. To rigorously test this hypothesis, we employed a fully implemented computational model based on distributional semantics to quantitatively measure the degree of semantic compositionality of novel compounds. In two large-scale studies, we collected timed sensibility judgements and lexical decisions for hundreds of morphologically structured nonwords in English. Response times were predicted by the constituents’ semantic contribution to the compositional process, with slower rejections for more compositional nonwords. We found no indication of a difference in these compositional effects between the tasks, suggesting that speakers automatically engage in a compositional process whenever they encounter morphologically structured stimuli, even when it is not required by the task at hand. Such compositional effects in the processing of novel compounds have important implications for studies that employ such stimuli as filler material or “nonwords,” as response times for these items can differ greatly depending on their compositionality.

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Semantic transparency effects in German compounds: A large dataset and multiple-task investigation

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Contrasting off‐line segmentation decisions with on‐line word segmentation during reading

Contrasting off‐line segmentation decisions with on‐line word segmentation during reading

Psycholinguistic norms for a set of 506 French compound words

Trying to make it work: Compositional effects in the processing of compound “nonwords”

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