Stem Formation in French Verbs: Structure, Rules, and Allomorphy

Gustavo Estivalet,Fanny Meunier

doi:10.3390/languages1020013

Abstract

Stem processing is an essential phase in word recognition. Most modern Romance languages, such as Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, have three theme vowels that define verbal classes and stem formation. However, French verbal classes are not traditionally described in terms of theme vowels. In this work, stem formation from theme vowel and allomorphic processes was investigated in French verbs. Our aim was to define the verbal stem formation structure processed during mental lexicon access in French. We conducted a cross-modal experiment and a masked priming experiment on different French stem formation processes from the first and third classes. We compared morphology-related priming effects to full priming obtained through identity priming, as well as to no priming obtained through a control condition. Stems from the first and third classes with a theme vowel presented full priming, whereas stems from the third class with allomorphy presented partial priming in both experiments. Our results suggest root-based stem formation for French. Verbs are recognized through word decomposition into stem and inflectional suffixes, and stem processing is based on root, theme vowel, and allomorphic processes. These results support a single-mechanism model with full decomposition and pre-lexical access defined by morphological rules.

Highlights

Morphology processing has received considerable attention in psycho, neuro, and linguistic research over the last four decades due to the strong symbolic manipulation assumptions that this level underlines [1,2]
We found partial priming in the two other verb types in which the stem is formed by allomorphic processes: (c) third class allomorphic insertion verbs in [-ire] and (d) third class allomorphic substitution verbs in [-indre]
reaction time (RT) below 300 ms and above 1800 ms were removed from the data to avoid extremely fast and slow responses (0.56%); one target

Summary

Introduction

Morphology processing has received considerable attention in psycho-, neuro-, and linguistic research over the last four decades due to the strong symbolic manipulation assumptions that this level underlines [1,2]. The morphological level in word recognition is better understood, but challenges in language idiosyncrasies and cross-linguistic comparisons remain. We investigated stem formation defined by theme vowel and allomorphic processes in French verbs. We explored the stem structure and morphological processing in verbal inflection through two priming experiments, one cross-modal and another masked, to better understand stem lexical access during word recognition. The following questions guided our investigation: (a) How are stems from different micro-classes based on different types of stem formation processed? (b) Is the identification of different French verbal forms explained by single- or dual-mechanism models? (c) Are verbal forms pre- or post-lexically decomposed for lexical access?.

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Conclusion