English Compound Words Research Articles

Bilingual Reading of Compound Words

The present study investigated whether bilingual readers activate constituents of compound words in one language while processing compound words in the other language via decomposition. Two experiments using a lexical decision task were conducted with adult Korean-English bilingual readers. In Experiment 1, the lexical decision of real English compound words was more accurate when the translated compounds (the combination of the translation equivalents of the constituents) in Korean (the nontarget language) were real words than when they were nonwords. In Experiment 2, when the frequency of the second constituents of compound words in English (the target language) was manipulated, the effect of lexical status of the translated compounds was greater on the compounds with high-frequency second constituents than on those with low-frequency second constituents in the target language. Together, these results provided evidence for morphological decomposition and cross-language activation in bilingual reading of compound words.

Cross-language transfer of insight into the structure of compound words

Cross-language transfer of awareness of the structure of compound words was investigated among native speakers of Chinese who were learning English as a second language. Chinese fifth graders received instruction in the morphology of four types of compound words in either Chinese or English. They then completed both the Chinese and English versions of a compound word structure analogy task. Compared with children who received no instruction, children who received instruction in Chinese were able to transfer knowledge they had acquired of compound types in Chinese to comparable types in English. Reverse transfer from English to Chinese was found among children with high reading proficiency.

Parafoveal processing within and between words

Parafoveal preview was examined within and between words in two eye movement experiments. In Experiment 1, unspaced and spaced English compound words were used (e.g., basketball, tennis ball). Prior to fixating the second lexeme, either a correct or a partial parafoveal preview (e.g., ball or badk) was provided using the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975). There was a larger effect of parafoveal preview on unspaced compound words than on spaced compound words. However, the parafoveal preview effect on spaced compound words was larger than would be predicted on the basis of prior research. Experiment 2 examined whether this large effect was due to spaced compounds forming a larger linguistic unit by pairing spaced compounds with nonlexicalized adjective-noun pairs. There were no significant interactions between item type and parafoveal preview, suggesting that it is the syntactic predictability of the noun that is driving the large preview effect.

The processing of compound words in English: Effects of word length on eye movements during reading

Two experiments are reported which investigated morphological processing in English using bilexemic compound words. Long and short compound words were presented in neutral sentences and eye movements were recorded while participants read the sentences to investigate the time course of compound word recognition. In Experiment 1, the frequency of the beginning lexeme was manipulated in addition to word length while in Experiment 2 rated frequency was manipulated. These experiments represented attempts to extend Bertram and Hyönä's (2003) work with Finnish compounds to English and to test the parallel dual-route model of compound processing. Predictions from this model would be that only long compound words should demonstrate a beginning lexeme frequency effect and short compound words should show an earlier effect of whole-word frequency. Contrary to this, short compound words did show a large beginning lexeme frequency effect as well as whole word frequency effects. These results will be problematic for parallel dual – route models to explain.

The role of semantic transparency in the processing of English compound words

Experiment 1 examined whether the semantic transparency of an English unspaced compound word affected how long it took to process it in reading. Three types of opaque words were each compared with a matched set of transparent words (i.e. matched on the length and frequency of the constituents and the frequency of the word as a whole). Two sets of the opaque words were partially opaque: either the first constituent was not related to the meaning of the compound (opaque-transparent) or the second constituent was not related to the meaning of the compound (transparent-opaque). In the third set (opaque-opaque), neither constituent was related to the meaning of the compound. For all three sets, there was no significant difference between the opaque and the transparent words on any eye-movement measure. This replicates an earlier finding with Finnish compound words (Pollatsek & Hyönä, 2005) and indicates that, although there is now abundant evidence that the component constituents play a role in the encoding of compound words, the meaning of the compound word is not constructed from the parts, at least for compound words for which a lexical entry exists. Experiment 2 used the same compounds but with a space between the constituents. This presentation resulted in a transparency effect, indicating that when an assembly route is 'forced', transparency does play a role.

Headhood of suffixes and final combining forms in english word formation

This paper offers a multi-layer description of the morphological, phonological, syntactic and semantic aspects of the behaviour of suffixes and final combining forms which function as heads in morphologically complex and compound words in English, both established and new ones. In the discussion, the following topics will also be dealt with in some detail: (a) a distinction between classical and modern final combining forms, (b) a distinction between classical, modern and dummy linking vowels, (c) dual headedness of composite FCFs, in which a micro-head and a macro-head can be observed to interact, (d) a contentbased approach to construing the headhood of suffixes and final combining forms, and (e) the notion of conceptual endocentricity.

The role of interword spaces in the processing of English compound words

Four experiments are reported which examined the role of interword spaces in the processing of English compound words. Normally nonspaced compounds (e.g., softball) as well as normally spaced compounds (e.g., front door) were presented with either their correct spatial layout (softball, front door) or with an incorrect spatial layout (soft ball, frontdoor). Lexical decisions and first fixations on the compounds showed an advantage for interword spaces. However, when refixations on the compounds were taken into account, inserting a space into a normally nonspaced compound significantly disrupted processing. This disruption was larger for adjective-noun compounds than for noun-noun compounds. The results indicate that spatially segmenting compounds facilitates access to the constituent lexemes while spatial unification of compounds benefits the specification of full compound meaning.

Compound word stress

Abstract Stress in English compound words poses difficult problems for foreign learners. English does not seem to be at all consistent in the way it treats compounds, either from the point of view of writing or from the point of view of pronunciation and especially stress. If we look at how this uncertainty and inconsistency arises we can perhaps understand better the difficulties. And if we look beyond the principles of word stress to the principles of accent placement, and in so doing pay attention to the information structure of compounds, we can obtain valuable guidance about stress placement in these words.

Compound Words in Present-Day English

Compound Words in Present-Day English

Compound Words in Present-Day English

Compound Words in Present-Day English

Book Review: English Compound Words and Phrases

Book Review: English Compound Words and Phrases