Monomorphemic Words Research Articles

When more is less: the impact of multimorphemic words on learning word meaning

Abstract Monomorphemic words have been found to influence category formation, as they encode one general category and thus activate it more than other related categories in the same lexical network. On the other hand, multimorphemic words can encode multiple categories from the same network by the multiple forms they combine. Superordinate categories are encoded by sub-lexical forms (e.g., affixes), while the entire words encode lower categories in the hierarchical structure. In the present study, we asked whether sub-lexical forms influence the learning of the meaning encoded by the entire word they underlie. We used Semitic-like words where sub-lexical forms (syllabic patterns) encode superordinate categories of manner-of-motion, and the entire words encode lower-level categories (moving characters). In our main experiment, a word-learning test showed that a shared syllabic pattern had a negative effect on the learning of the moving characters encoded by the entire word. This effect was revealed mainly in dimensions related to the superordinate category encoded by the pattern. The effect and its direction are beyond the expectations of enhanced category representations suggested in previous literature. We conclude that the effect of word-form is beyond the specific category they encode and can have different directions at different hierarchical levels.

Effects of Subjective Type Frequency and Phonetic Structure on L2 Morphological Processing: A Constructional Perspective

Little research has been conducted to investigate the effects of subjective type frequency and phonetic structure on morphological processing. From the perspective of construction, this study carried out two experiments to examine whether these two factors have impacts on the processing of derivatives by Chinese EFL learners. In Experiment 1, the masked priming paradigm produced facilitation effect for the prefixed words rather than the suffixed ones. However, participants with higher subjective type frequency of the target words did not differ significantly from their counterparts in response times (RTs). In Experiment 2, words whose phonetic structure is consistent with the morphological structure took significantly longer RTs than the inconsistent group and the monomorphemic words in the unprimed lexical decision task. These findings demonstrated that subjective type frequency may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the generalization of morphological constructions, while phonetic structure can affect the perceptual salience of affix, thus playing an important part in morphological decomposition.

Malay Lexicon Project 3: The impact of orthographic-semantic consistency on lexical decision latencies.

Theories of word processing propose that readers are sensitive to statistical co-occurrences between spelling and meaning. Orthographic-semantic consistency (OSC) measures provide a continuous estimate of the statistical regularities between spelling and meaning. Here we examined Malay, an Austronesian language that is agglutinative. In Malay, stems are often repeated in other words that share a related meaning (e.g., sunyi/quiet; ke-sunyi-an/silence; makan/eat; makan-an/foods). The first goal was to expand an existing large Malay database by computing OSC estimates for 2,287 monomorphemic words. The second goal was to explore the impact of root family size and OSC on lexical decision latencies for monomorphemic words. Decision latencies were collected for 1,280 Malay words of various morphological structures. Of these, data from 1,000 monomorphemic words were analysed in a series of generalised additive mixed models (GAMMs). Root family size and OSC were significant predictors of decision latencies, particularly for lower frequency words. We found a facilitative effect of root family size and OSC. Furthermore, we observed an interaction between root family size and OSC in that an effect of OSC was only apparent in words with larger root families. This interaction has not yet been explored in English but has the potential to be a new benchmark effect to test distributional models of word processing.

Decomposition in early stages of learning novel morphologically derived words: The impact of linear vs. non-linear structure

We examined whether morphological decomposition takes place in early stages of learning a novel language, and whether morphological structure (linear vs. non-linear) influences decomposition. Across four sessions, 41 native-Hebrew speakers learned morphologically derived words in a novel morpho-lexicon, with two complex conditions: linear and non-linear; and a third simple condition with monomorphemic words. Participants showed faster learning of trained words in the linear condition, and better generalization to untrained words for both complex conditions compared to the simple condition, with better performance for linear than non-linear morphology. Learning the root morpheme, which provides a concrete meaning, was better than learning template/suffix morphemes, which are more abstract. Overall, our results suggest that saliency of discrete units plays an important role in decomposition in early stages of learning derived words, even for speakers highly familiar with the non-linear structure in their L1.

Bimese Prefixes in Sentences to English for Maintaining Local Language of Bima

This research aims at expressing Bimese Prefixes referring to English in Sentences for maintaining Local Language of Bima. Qualitative Descriptive Method was used. Bimese has free morphemes and bound ones. Process of forming its new words can be described morphologically. It has 11 prefixes consisting of 10 productive prefixes (ka-, ma-, na-, ta-, ra-, da-, di-, sa-, ti-, and ca-) and 1 unproductive prefix (pa-), so its productive prefixes dominate its affixation. They are used to form new words in derivational process only because of changing identities of the words. Bimese Prefixation is derivational. The Bimese and English are contrastively analyzed. The Bimese Prefixes refer to English words, prefixes, and suffix. No English suffix only is referred by the Bimese prefix. The Bimese has monomorphemic words and polymorphemic ones. A Bimese word may have more than one prefix and is never ended by a consonant sound but a vowel one. Its base phoneme never changes after receiving prefixes. Its words which can be combined by the prefixes are five classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. Maintenance of Bimese as a local language and a part of culture is necessarily carried out to be constantly existed and not be destroyed.

LaDEP: A large database of English pseudo-compounds

The Large Database of English Pseudo-compounds (LaDEP) contains nearly 7500 English words which mimic, but do not truly possess, a compound morphemic structure. These pseudo-compounds can be parsed into two free morpheme constituents (e.g., car-pet), but neither constituent functions as a morpheme within the overall word structure. The items were manually coded as pseudo-compounds, further coded for features related to their morphological structure (e.g., presence of multiple affixes, as in ruler-ship), and summarized using common psycholinguistic variables (e.g., length, frequency). This paper also presents an example analysis comparing the lexical decision response times between compound words, pseudo-compound words, and monomorphemic words. Pseudo-compounds and monomorphemic words did not differ in response time, and both groups had slower response times than compound words. This analysis replicates the facilitatory effect of compound constituents during lexical processing, and demonstrates the need to emphasize the pseudo-constituent structure of pseudo-compounds to parse their effects. Further applications of LaDEP include both psycholinguistic studies investigating the nature of human word processing or production and educational or clinical settings evaluating the impact of linguistic features on language learning and impairments. Overall, the items within LaDEP provide a varied and representative sample of the population of English pseudo-compounds which may be used to facilitate further research related to morphological decomposition, lexical access, meaning construction, orthographical influences, and much more.

Are two words recalled or recognised as one? How age-of-acquisition affects memory for compound words

The age at which a person acquires knowledge of an item is a strong predictor of item retrieval, hereon defined as the Age of Acquisition (AoA) effect. This effect is such that early-acquired words are processed more quickly and accurately than late-acquired items. One account to explain this effect is the integrated account, where the AoA effect occurs in the early processes of lexical retrieval and hence should increase in tasks necessitating greater semantic processing. Importantly, this account has been applied to lexical processing, but not, to date, memory tasks. The current study aimed to assess whether the integrated account could explain memory tasks, using compound words, which differ from monomorphemic words regarding ease of mapping and semantic processes. Four-hundred-and-eighty participants were split into four groups of 120 participants for each of four experiments. Participants were required to recall unspaced and spaced compound words (Experiments 1 and 2, respectively) or make a recognition decision for unspaced and spaced compound words (Experiments 3 and 4, respectively). This approach allowed us to establish how semantic processing was involved in recalling and recognising the items. We found that (AoA) was related to all tasks such that irrespective of space, early-acquired compound words were recalled more accurately than late-acquired compound words in free recall. In recognition memory, late-acquired compound words were recognised more accurately than early-acquired compound words. However, the slope for the AoA was semantic processing influenced free recall to a greater extent than the recognition memory, with the AoA effect being larger in free recall than recognition memory. In addition, the AoA effect for the compound word was larger in spaced compound words than unspaced compound words. This demonstrates that the AoA effect in memory has multiple sources.

Morphological decomposition in Chinese compound word recognition: Electrophysiological evidence

The present study examined the effect of both morphological complexity and semantic transparency in Chinese compound word recognition. Using a visual lexical decision task, our electrophysiological results showed that transparent and opaque compounds induced stronger Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) than monomorphemic words. This result suggests that Chinese compounds might be decomposed into their constituent morphemes at the lemma level, whereas monomorphemic words are accessed as a whole-word lemma directly from the form level. In addition, transparent and opaque compounds produced a similar N400 as each other, suggesting that transparency did not show an effect on the involvement of constituent morphemes during access to the whole-word lemma. Two behavioral experiments additionally showed similar patterns to the EEG results. These findings support morphological decomposition for compounds at the lemma level as proposed by the full-parsing model, and no evidence is found to support the role of transparency during Chinese compound word recognition.

15세기 단일어 내부 ㅿ 변화에 대한 가설 - 평준화에 의한 유추를 중심으로 -

15세기 단일어 내부 ㅿ 변화에 대한 가설 - 평준화에 의한 유추를 중심으로 -

Metaphors of Orchid Names in Indonesian

This article aims to reveal several matters concerning metaphorical expressions found in orchid naming practices in Indonesian. By using data collected through google tracing, it is found that many orchid names in Indonesian consist of metaphorical expressions located on the "sub-species" and "characteristics" of the name elements. With regard to the forms, the metaphors can be constructed in the forms of monomorphemic words, polymorphemic words, and phrases. The metaphorical expressions are exploited to resemble with the target domains, i.e., various parts of the plants, mainly the shape and motives of the flower petals, leaf, size of the plant, and root. Various entities are close to human life used as source domains of metaphors, such as animals, human beings, things, plants, sky objects, and others. Most of the source domains are universal, and several of them are culturally specific as reflection of sociocultural realities

Does vowel harmony affect visual word recognition? Evidence from Finnish.

One of the most representative morpho-phonological features of Finnish is the existence of vowel harmony. Back vowels (a, o, and u) and front vowels (ä, ö, and y) cannot appear in the same monomorphemic word (e.g., PÖYTÄ [table] but not POYTÄ)-the vowels e and i are considered "neutral" and can accompany either front or back vowels (e.g., PELÄSTYÄ [get frightened]). Previous research has revealed that native speakers of Finnish use vowel harmony to help segment multilexeme compound words where each lexeme may differ in vowel harmony (e.g., työmaa = työ+maa [workplace]). In Experiments 1 and 2, we examined whether vowel harmony has an effect on the initial moments of monomorphemic word processing using the masked priming technique (lexical decision: Experiment 1; naming: Experiment 2). A target word (e.g., MÄNTY [pine]) could be preceded by a harmonious or disharmonious prime (mänty-MÄNTY vs. manty-MÄNTY; mönty-MÄNTY vs. monty-MÄNTY). As further controls, we also included a comparison with two harmonious conditions differing in the presence of a diacritical letter (mänty-MÄNTY vs. menty-MÄNTY) and a letter similarity comparison with disharmonious primes (manty-MÄNTY vs. monty-MÄNTY). To further examine whether vowel harmony has an effect at later phases of visual word processing, Experiment 3 compared the recognition of harmonious and disharmonious pseudowords in a single-presentation lexical-decision task (e.g., HÖPEÄ vs. HOPEÄ; baseword: HÄPEÄ [shame]). We found slower responses for harmonious than for disharmonious pseudowords. Taken together, these findings reveal that, while Finnish readers are sensitive to vowel harmony, this effect does not occur in the initial stages of processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA ANAK USIA 3-4 TAHUN (STUDI KASUS PADA SISWA PAUD PITARA PONDOK CABE ILIR, TANGERANG SELATAN)

The purpose of this study was to describe language acquisition in children aged 3-4 years. The subjects of this study were 3 boys from PAUD Pitara Pondok Cabe Ilir, Pamulang, South Tangerang aged about 3-4 years. The focus of this research is the acquisition at the level of fontology to syntax. Data was collected by using documentation, interview, listening, and note-taking techniques. This study applies a qualitative descriptive method. The results showed that language acquisition in children aged 3-5 years occurred in the fields of phonology, syntax, and semantics. In terms of phonology, subjects E, A, and R have mastered most of the consonant phonemes. However, there are also some phonemes that cannot be pronounced perfectly. In terms of morphology, subjects E, A, and R have mastered the form of words that are obtained or mastered are monomorphemic word forms (one morpheme) and language acquisition in the syntactic aspect, indicating that there is a phenomenon of the production of simple sentences or called minor sentences.

İşlev Kelimeleri Olarak İngilizce Edatlar Dil Öğrenenler İçin Normalde Zannedildiği Kadar Kolay Değildir

Prepositions as function words and single monomorphemic words are the most basic words of the human language, especially in the context of maintaining daily life. They are probably the first lexes/words entered to the human’s linguistic repertoire, as their requirements in the language are so essential. Prepositions shows various relationships between lexes or phrases in sentences. Among these relationships time, points, position, direction and various degrees of mental or emotional attitudes seem to be significant. The purpose of the research is try to reveal what kind of challenges English prepositions have for the learners and also to confirm if they are as difficult as some linguists have stated before. Another purpose is to find out which features are more difficult among all their entity properties. The results of this study disclose that English prepositions possess very complex structures, different meanings and an associating duty of various types of part of speeches. In particular, those that construct the phrasal verbs require great effort for learning due to the loss of the meaning (sometimes partially, sometimes completely) they undergo. It has been understood that their properties such as steadily changing meaning and function make them quite difficult elements for learners of English.

Modeling Complex Word Reading: Examining Influences at the Level of the Word and Child on Mono- and Polymorphemic Word Reading

ABSTRACT Purpose The probability of a child reading a word correctly is influenced by both child skills and properties of the word. The purpose of this study was to investigate child-level skills (set for variability and vocabulary), word-level properties (concreteness), word structure (mono- vs polymorphemic), and interactions between these properties and word structure within a comprehensive item-level model of complex word reading. This study is unique in that it purposely sampled both mono- and polymorphemic polysyllabic words. Method A sample of African American (n = 69) and Hispanic (n = 6) students in grades 2–5 (n = 75) read a set of mono- and polymorphemic polysyllabic words (J = 54). Item-level responses were modeled using cross-classified generalized random-effects models allowing variance to be partitioned between child and word while controlling for other important child factors and word features. Results Set for variability and the interaction between concreteness and word structure (i.e., mono- vs polymorphemic) were significant predictors. Higher probabilities of reading poly- over monomorphemic words were identified at lower levels of concreteness with the opposite at higher levels of concreteness. Conclusions Results indicate important predictors at both the child- and word-level and support the importance of morphological structure for reading abstract polysyllabic words.

KATA-KATA TABU (MALI) DALAM BAHASA DAYAK KUBITN DI SERAWAI

AbstractThis study aims to describe the form and meaning of taboo words in the Kubitan Dayak language, the function of taboo words in the Kubitn Dayak language, references to euphemisms, and implementation in learning. The method used in this study is a qualitative descriptive method. Research approach, namely ethnolinguistics. Data collection techniques are direct observation techniques, refer to the conversation, record and take notes. This study resulted in 58 taboo words in the Dayak Kubitn language, monomorphemic word forms 21 taboo words, polymorphemic forms 5 taboo words and taboo word forms in the form of phrases as many as 32 taboo words. The meaning of taboo words is divided into three, lexical meaning 21 taboo words, grammatical meaning 37 taboo words, and cultural meaning 28 taboo words. The euphemism references are 9 data in the Kubitn Dayak language in Serawai. The function of cursing is 6 taboo words, insulting is 15 taboo words, swearing is 21 words, covering 15 words and the function of taboo words as a joke is 8 data.Keywords: Ethnolinguistics, Euphemism Reference, Function, Meaning, Taboo Words (Mali).

On the lexical representation(s) of compounds: A continuous picture naming study.

The lexical representation of compound words in speech production is still under debate. While most studies with healthy adult speakers suggest that a single lemma representation is active during compound production, data from neuropsychological studies point toward multiple representations, with activation of the compound's constituent lemmas in addition to the compound's lemma. This study exploits the cumulative semantic interference effect to investigate the lexical representation of compounds in speech production. In a continuous picture naming experiment, category membership was established through the compounds' first constituents (category animals: zebra crossing, pony tail, cat litter …), while the compounds themselves were not semantically related. Moreover, pictures depicting the compounds' first constituents (zebra, pony, cat …) were presented as a control condition. As expected, naming latencies within categories increased linearly with each additionally named category member when producing monomorphemic words, which is interpreted as increasing interference during lexical selection. Importantly, this cumulative semantic interference effect was also observed for compounds. This indicates that the lemmas of the compounds' first constituents were activated during compound production, causing interference due to their semantic relationship and thereby hampering the production of the whole compound. The results are thus in line with the multiple-lemma representation account (Marelli et al., 2012). We argue that the apparent contradiction between results of previous studies with healthy adult speakers and our current study can be explained by the different experimental paradigms used. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Age of acquisition effects on the decomposition of compound words

ABSTRACT Age of acquisition (AoA) is a measure of learning experience and a strong predictor of lexical retrieval. The integrated account predicts that the AoA effect should be shown in the early processes of word recognition and the AoA effect should increase in tasks requiring greater semantic processing. The present study investigates the integrated account in compound words, which differ from monomorphemic words regarding ease of mapping and semantic processes in lexical retrieval. Forty-eight participants completed a compound lexeme segmentation (CLS) task, in which participants named either the head or modifier depending on the number above the compound word, to establish how semantics are involved in processing the head and the modifier. The results demonstrated that semantics influenced the naming of the modifier to a greater extent than the head, with the AoA effect being larger in the modifier than the head. This indicates that the AoA effect has multiple origins.

The grammar network: How linguistic structure is shaped by language use by Holger Diessel

Reviewed by: The grammar network: How linguistic structure is shaped by language useby Holger Diessel Natalia Levshina The grammar network: How linguistic structure is shaped by language use. By H olgerD iessel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xviii, 290. ISBN 9781108671040. $110 (Hb). The network is one of the key concepts that describe our life experience. We communicate via social networks and use the World Wide Web. The masses of big data we produce, consciously or not, are analyzed by neural network algorithms. It is not surprising that networks are a popular concept in linguistics as well. Well-known examples are the construction in construction grammar, radial polysemy networks in cognitive semantics, and semantic maps in typology. The grammar networkby Holger Diessel takes the network approach to a new level, integrating different strands of usage-based linguistics and discussing a multitude of different phenomena of grammar and lexicon, from lexical polysemy to word order, and from parts of speech to morphological productivity. The aim of his book is to elaborate on and integrate two main ideas of usage-based linguistics: first, all aspects of linguistic structure are emergent and fluid, being shaped by domain-general processes in language use; second, the grammatical system is organized as a network. The book consists of eleven chapters. The introductory chapter describes the aims of the book and summarizes the general principles of usage-based linguistics. It questions the usefulness of such distinctions as competence vs. performance, synchrony vs. diachrony, and words vs. rules. Usage-based linguistics sees grammar as an emergent system, which has evolved for the purposes of communication and processing on the basis of general cognitive principles. From this follows an important methodological conclusion: 'we cannot approach the study of grammar with a predefined set of primitive categories. On the contrary, what we need to explain is how linguistic categories evolve, stabilize and change' (6). In the first part of the book D introduces the basic assumptions and concepts, describing the architecture of the grammar network (Ch. 2) and the domain-general principles of language use (Ch. 3). The most important elements of a grammar network are signs (constructions and lexemes). The links (edges) in a network can be symbolic (connecting form and meaning), sequential (connecting elements in sequences, similar to syntagmatic relationships), and taxonomic (connecting patterns at different levels of abstraction). Analogous to activation strength in neural networks, the links have different weights, which depend on different factors, such as frequency of occurrence in linguistic input and output, conceptualization, and pragmatic inference. A grammar network is nested, which means that nodes of a network can themselves be analyzed as networks. Different from Goldberg's (1995) construction grammar, D makes a distinction between constructions and lexemes. Lexemes are monomorphemic words and other morphemes, which tap directly into world knowledge. In contrast, constructions are meaningful templates with slots for other linguistic expressions, which provide instructions for integration of lexical expressions into a coherent semantic representation. Based on this distinction, three further types of links are proposed: lexical (connecting lexemes with similar or contrastive forms and meanings), constructional (connecting constructions at the same level of abstraction), and filler-slot relationships (connecting particular lexemes or phrases with particular slots of constructional schemas). The grammar network is shaped by domain-general cognitive processes (Ch. 3). The most important ones are social cognition, conceptualization, and memory, which compete in determining linguistic decisions—that is, the choice between different ways of conveying one's communicative intention for the speaker and between different interpretations for the hearer. There is evidence, for instance, that 'speaker-oriented processes', such as memory retrieval, priming, and automatization, can dominate 'hearer-oriented processes' of common ground and audience design. The domain-general processes leave long-term effects on language structure in diachronic change, and on individual language development in ontogeny. At the same time, D emphasizes that L1 acquisition [End Page 825]and diachronic change differ substantially. In particular, children extract novel schemas from the input, while diachronic change involves the modification of already existing ones. In the second part of the book, D focuses on the interpretation of signs as networks, beginning with taxonomic links between representations at...

Parafoveal access to word stem during reading: An eye movement study

Previous studies (Hyönä, Yan, & Vainio, 2018; Yan et al., 2014) have demonstrated that in morphologically rich languages a word's morphological status is processed parafoveally to be used in modulating saccadic programming in reading. In the present parafoveal preview study conducted in Finnish, we examined the exact nature of this effect by comparing reading of morphologically complex words (a stem + two suffixes) to that of monomorphemic words. In the preview-change condition, the final 3–4 letters were replaced with other letters making the target word a pseudoword; for suffixed words, the word stem remained intact but the suffix information was unavailable; for monomorphemic words, only part of the stem was parafoveally available. Three alternative predictions were put forth. According to the first alternative, the morphological effect in initial fixation location is due to parafoveally perceiving the suffix as a highly frequent letter cluster and then adjusting the saccade program to land closer to the word beginning for suffixed than monomorphemic words. The second alternative, the processing difficulty hypothesis, assumes a morphological complexity effect: suffixed words are more complex than monomorphemic words. Therefore, the attentional window is narrower and the saccade is shorter. The third alternative posits that the effect reflects parafoveal access to the word's stem. The results for the initial fixation location and fixation durations were consistent with the parafoveal stem-access view.

A Multilinguistic Spelling Analysis of Children who are Hard of Hearing.

Spelling in writing samples was compared between children who are hard of hearing (HH) (n= 142) and their peers with typical hearing (TH) (n= 72) in second and fourth grade. The same analyses were then conducted comparing groups of children who are HH with different levels of aided audibility. Compared to children with TH, children who are HH produced fewer misspelled words (p= .041, d= .42) at second grade but performed similarly in fourth grade (p = .943, d= .02). Compared to peers with TH, children who are HH demonstrated similar distributions of errors in roots but some differences in the distribution of errors for affixes. Different levels of aided audibility among children who are HH were not associated with significant differences in spelling accuracy at both grades. However, second-grade children with poorer aided audibility produced significantly more phonological omissions (p= .005, r= .32) and orthographic consonant errors for monomorphemic words (p= .001, r= .37), as well as more orthographic consonant errors for and affixes (p= .015, r= .28).