Morphological Family Size Effect Research Articles

Compound word frequency modifies the effect of character frequency in reading Chinese.

In two eye-tracking studies, reading of two-character Chinese compound words was examined. First and second character frequency were orthogonally manipulated to examine the extent to which Chinese compound words are processed via the component characters. In Experiment 1, first and second character frequency were manipulated for frequent compound words, whereas in Experiment 2 it was done for infrequent compound words. Fixation time and skipping probability for the first and second character were affected by its frequency in neither experiment, nor in their pooled analysis. Yet, in Experiment 2 fixations on the second character were longer when a high-frequency character was presented as the first character compared with when a low-frequency character was presented as the first character. This reversed character frequency effect reflects a morphological family size effect and is explained by the constraint hypothesis, according to which fixation time on the second component of two-component compound words is shorter when its identity is constrained by the first component. It is concluded that frequent Chinese compound words are processed holistically, whereas with infrequent compound words there is some room for the characters to play a role in the identification process.

Whole-word frequency and inflectional paradigm size facilitate Estonian case-inflected noun processing

Estonian is a morphologically rich Finno-Ugric language with nominal paradigms that have at least 28 different inflected forms but sometimes more than 40. For languages with rich inflection, it has been argued that whole-word frequency, as a diagnostic of whole-word representations, should not be predictive for lexical processing. We report a lexical decision experiment, showing that response latencies decrease both with frequency of the inflected form and its inflectional paradigm size. Inflectional paradigm size was also predictive of semantic categorization, indicating it is a semantic effect, similar to the morphological family size effect. These findings fit well with the evidence for frequency effects of word n-grams in languages with little inflectional morphology, such as English. Apparently, the amount of information on word use in the mental lexicon is substantially larger than was previously thought.

Production of Estonian case-inflected nouns shows whole-word frequency and paradigmatic effects

Most psycholinguistic models of lexical processing assume that the comprehension and production of inflected forms is mediated by morphemic constituents. Several more recent studies, however, have challenged this assumption by providing empirical evidence that information about individual inflected forms and their paradigmatic relations is available in long-term memory (Baayen et al. 1997; Milin et al. 2009a, 2009b). Here, we investigate how whole-word frequency, inflectional paradigm size and morphological family size affect production latencies and articulation durations when subjects are asked to read aloud isolated Estonian case-inflected nouns. In Experiment 1, we observed that words with a larger morphological family elicited shorter speech onset latencies, and that forms with higher whole-word frequency had shorter acoustic durations. Experiment 2, for which we increased statistical power by using 2,800 words, revealed that higher whole-word frequency, inflectional paradigm size, and morphological family size reduced both speech onset times and acoustic durations. These results extend our knowledge of morphological processing in three ways. First, whole-word frequency effects of inflected forms in morphologically rich languages are not restricted to a small number of very high-frequency forms, contrary to previous claims (Niemi et al. 1994; Hankamer 1989; Yang 2016). Second, we replicated the morphological family size effect in a new domain, the acoustic durations of inflected forms. Third, we showed that a novel paradigmatic measure, inflectional paradigm size, predicts word naming latencies and acoustic durations. These results fit well with Word-and-Paradigm morphology (Blevins 2016) and argue against strictly (de)compositional models of lexical processing.

Word frequency and morphological family size effects on the accuracy and speed of lexical access in school‐aged bilingual students

This study investigated whether school‐aged bilingual students demonstrate word frequency and morphological family size (MFS) effects for written L2 words, and if so, the extent to which the effects are present for bilingual students in different grades. The study revealed both word frequency and MFS effects for the bilingual students in relation to the accuracy of their responses. The bilingual students were less accurate in response to mid and low‐frequency words and words with a very small morphological family compared to the monolingual students. Despite that, they demonstrated similar speed of access to the written L2 words in different frequency ranges and with different MFSs. The findings were discussed in terms of the strength of connections between the form and meaning of words.

Effects of primary and secondary morphological family size in monolingual and bilingual word processing

This study investigated primary and secondary morphological family size effects in monolingual and bilingual processing, combining experimentation with computational modeling. Family size effects were investigated in an English lexical decision task for Dutch–English bilinguals and English monolinguals using the same materials. To account for the possibility that family size effects may only show up in words that resemble words in the native language of the bilinguals, the materials included, in addition to purely English items, Dutch–English cognates (identical and non-identical in form). As expected, the monolingual data revealed facilitatory effects of English primary family size. Moreover, while the monolingual data did not show a main effect of cognate status, only form-identical cognates revealed an inhibitory effect of English secondary family size. The bilingual data showed stronger facilitation for identical cognates, but as for monolinguals, this effect was attenuated for words with a large secondary family size. In all, the Dutch–English primary and secondary family size effects in bilinguals were strikingly similar to those of monolinguals. Computational simulations suggest that the primary and secondary family size effects can be understood in terms of discriminative learning of the English lexicon.

Morphological Family Size effects in L1 and L2 processing: An electrophysiological study

The present study examined Morphological Family Size effects in first and second language processing. Items with a high or low Dutch (L1) Family Size were contrasted in four experiments involving Dutch–English bilinguals. In two experiments, reaction times (RTs) were collected in English (L2) and Dutch (L1) lexical decision tasks; in two other experiments, an L1 and L2 go/no-go lexical decision task were performed while Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Two questions were addressed. First, is the ERP signal sensitive to the morphological productivity of words? Second, does nontarget language activation in L2 processing spread beyond the item itself, to the morphological family of the activated nontarget word? The two behavioural experiments both showed a facilitatory effect of Dutch Family Size, indicating that the morphological family in the L1 is activated regardless of language context. In the two ERP experiments, Family Size effects were found to modulate the N400 component. Less negative waveforms were observed for words with a high L1 Family Size compared to words with a low L1 Family Size in the N400 time window, in both the L1 and L2 task. In addition, these Family Size effects persisted in later time windows. The data are discussed in light of the Morphological Family Resonance Model (MFRM) model of morphological processing and the BIA + model.

ERP index of the morphological family size effect during word recognition

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the N400 is affected by the semantic richness of associated neighboring word members or by the density of the orthographic syllable neighborhood. Another purpose of this study was to investigate the source of the different LPC in respect to the semantic richness. To do so, the density of the syllable neighborhood and the size of the morphological family of a word were orthogonally manipulated. ERPs from 24 participants were collected during a go/no-go semantic categorization task. The results showed that the N400 effect was mainly influenced by the density of the syllable neighborhood rather than by the morphological family size. The results also showed that words with a larger morphological family size generate significantly larger LPC than words with a smaller morphological family size. The present study did not support the assumption that the main source of the N400 effect is the semantic richness of the associated neighbors. The present results suggest that the N400 is more sensitive to the density of the syllable neighborhood and LPC is sensitive to the density of the semantic neighborhood reflected by the morphological family size.

Morphological Family Size Effects in Young First and Second Language Learners: Evidence of Cross‐Language Semantic Activation in Visual Word Recognition

This study examined to what extent young second language (L2) learners showed morphological family size effects in L2 word recognition and whether the effects were grade‐level related. Turkish‐Dutch bilingual children (L2) and Dutch (first language, L1) children from second, fourth, and sixth grade performed a Dutch lexical decision task on words with varying family sizes. The responses of both L1 and L2 children were more accurate (in second grade) and faster (in fourth and sixth grades) for words with a large family than for words with a small family, even though the L2 children had a smaller vocabulary size in Dutch than the L1 children. These findings show how the spreading of semantic activation across languages can influence word recognition in L2 learners.

The role of morphological family size in word recognition

This paper proposes an approach for studying the structure and development of the mental lexicon based on morphological family size. For adults, the number of morphologically related words has been shown to facilitate word recognition (Schreuder, & Baayen, 1997). This effect is assumed to be caused by connections in the mental lexicon between morphologically related words. Because children still have to acquire word representations and their interconnectedness, family size effects in children are considered to be smaller. So far, however, developmental data on morphological family size effects are generally lacking. As a first step, we wanted to find out to what extent word frequency and morphological family size effects will appear in adult lexical decision data while using adult versus child language corpora as a frame of reference. Two findings were obtained. First, the materials specifically constructed for children evoked both frequency and family size effects. Second, frequency counts based on a Dutch corpus of child language (Schrooten & Vermeer, 1994) showed reliable frequency effects.

Changing places: A cross-language perspective on frequency and family size in Dutch and Hebrew

This study uses the morphological family size effect as a tool for exploring the degree of isomorphism in the networks of morphologically related words in the Hebrew and Dutch mental lexicon. Hebrew and Dutch are genetically unrelated, and they structure their morphologically complex words in very different ways. Two visual lexical decision experiments document substantial cross-language predictivity for the family size measure after partialing out the effect of word frequency and word length. Our data show that the morphological family size effect is not restricted to Indo-European languages but extends to languages with non-concatenative morphology. In Hebrew, a new inhibitory component of the family size effect emerged that arises when a Hebrew root participates in different semantic fields.

A roommate in cream: Morphological family size effects on interlingual homograph recognition

In monolingual studies, target word recognition is affected by the number of words that are morphologically related to the target. Larger morphological families lead to faster recognition. We investigated the role of the morphological family size (MFS) effect in bilingual word recognition. First, re-analysis of available English lexical decision data from Dutch–English bilinguals reported by Schulpen, Dijkstra, and Schriefers (2003) revealed a facilitatory English MFS effect in purely English words and in Dutch–English interlingual homographs (such as ROOM, a word that exists both in English and in Dutch, where it means ‘cream’). For interlingual homographs, the Dutch MFS simultaneously induced inhibitory effects, supporting a language non-selective access process. The MFS effect was independent of the relative frequency of the two readings of the homographs. Task-dependence of the MFS effect was demonstrated in generalized Dutch–English lexical decision data, which led to facilitatory effects of both families. Finally, the pervasiveness of the MFS effect was demonstrated in a Dutch lexical decision task performed by the same type of bilinguals. Facilitatory effects of Dutch MFS were found for Dutch monolingual words and interlingual homographs, which were also affected by inhibitory effects of English MFS. The results are discussed in relation to the task-sensitive BIA+ model of bilingual word recognition.

La notion de productivité morphologique : modèles psycholinguistiques et données expérimentales

Fanny Meunier : Morphological productivity: psycholinguistic models and experimental data In this article, we first described word recognition theoretical models that included or take position about morphology. Models that have been proposed belong to a continuum going from morphology as part of the mental lexicon to morphology as a post-lexical phenomena. Between these two extreme models, others postulated more refined processes taking into account linguistic and /or statistical parameters. In a second part, experimental data that are theoretically or statistically linked to productivity are exposed; in particular the non-word structures effect, the morphological family size effect, the semantic transparency effect and the affix productivity effect.

The morphological family size effect and morphology

It has been reported that in visual lexical decision response latencies to simplex nouns are shorter when these nouns have large morphological families, i.e., when they appear as constituents in large numbers of derived words and compounds. This study presents the results of four experiments that show that verbs have a Family Size effect independently of nominal conversion alternants, that this effect is a strict type frequency effect andnot a token frequency effect, that the effect is co-determined by the morphological structure of the inflected verb, and that it occurs irrespective of the orthographic shape of the base word.