Morphological Relatedness Research Articles

Biogeographical diet variation within and between the rabbitfishes Siganus corallinus, Siganus doliatus, Siganus trispilos and Siganus virgatus.

Feeding habits of herbivorous fishes play an important role in shaping the form and function of coastal marine ecosystems. Rabbitfishes (Siganidae) are important consumers of macroalgae on Indo-West Pacific coral reefs. However, it is unclear how their diet varies among and within species at biogeographical scales, casting doubt on their precise functional roles across different regions. The present study assessed the inter- and intra-specific diet variation of four rabbitfishes (Siganus trispilos, Siganus corallinus, Siganus virgatus and Siganus doliatus) factored by morphological relatedness among populations from Ningaloo Reef (western Australia), the Great Barrier Reef (GBR, eastern Australia) and the Yaeyama Islands (Okinawa Prefecture, Japan). Results showed that the region had a strong effect on diet, effectively reducing the expected effect of morphologic similitude. While intra-specific differences were only significant when populations inhabited different regions; interspecific differences were not as predicted, with different morphotypes having similar diets when populations inhabited the same regions. Rabbitfishes consumed more corticated and filamentous macroalgae on the GBR, more foliose and membranous macroalgae at the Yaeyama Islands, and more leathery macroalgae at Ningaloo Reef. The findings indicate that rabbitfishes have high diet plasticity, and hence their functional role as mediators of competition between macroalgae and corals can change across biogeographic regions. Local context is therefore important when assessing the diet and functional role of herbivorous fishes. As climate change unfolds, shifts in the distribution, trophic behaviour and function of species are expected, making the study of trophic plasticity more important.

Toward a Universal Dependencies Treebank of Old English: Representing the Morphological Relatedness of Un-Derivatives

This article deals with one of the aspects involved in the compilation of a treebank of Old English within the framework of Universal Dependencies. More specifically, this study addresses the question of how to account for the remarkable degree of Old English morphological relatedness in a type of treebank designed to stress syntactic similarities across languages. The solution proposed and assessed in this study is the addition of an extra field of annotation for morphological relatedness. The data of this analysis comprise 1106 derivatives attaching the prefix un-. Out of these, there are around 80 morphologically complex nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs whose derivation cannot be described gradually, 33 of which are unique formations or hapax legomena according to the attestations provided by the Dictionary of Old English Corpus. The main conclusion is that the specification of short-distance and long-distance morphological relatedness provides the Old English treebank with a paradigmatic dimension that can be particularly relevant for languages with relatively generalised and transparent derivational morphology.

Morphology as an aid in orthographic learning of new words: The influence of inflected and derived forms in spelling acquisition

Prior studies have shown that children are sensitive to the principle of root consistency, whereby root morphemes retain their spelling across related words. The current study used an implicit learning situation to examine, in 56 third grade and 56 fifth grade French-speaking children, whether orthographic learning of new morphologically simple words ending in a silent letter benefited from morphological relatedness with inflected and derived forms. In the morphological condition, the new words (e.g.,clirot with a final silentt) appeared in short stories along with a morphologically related form in which the silent letter of the root was pronounced, justifying the presence of the silent letter in the root word. The morphologically complex form was an inflectional form (e.g.,clirote) for half of the children and was a derived form (e.g.,clirotage) for the other half. In the nonmorphological condition, the new words were not accompanied by morphologically related forms. After children had read the stories, their orthographic learning was assessed by asking the children to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g.,clirot,cliros, cliro). Children chose correct spellings more often in the morphological condition than in the nonmorphological condition for both types of morphology in Grade 5 but only for inflectional morphology in Grade 3. Our findings indicate that, in learning new spellings, French children seem to rely on the root consistency principle earlier for inflectional morphology than for derivational morphology. Possible reasons for this developmental delay in mastering derivational morphology are discussed.

Long-lag identity priming in the absence of long-lag morphological priming: evidence from Mandarin tone alternation

The present study tested whether listeners hearing one form of a morpheme activate other forms of the same morpheme. Listeners performed lexical decisions while hearing Mandarin monosyllables; crucially, critical targets could be primed by related syllables that occurred 18–52 trials earlier (long-lag priming). The use of long-lag priming ensures that any facilitation effects are due to morphological relatedness and not to semantic or form relationships, which do not prime lexical decisions at long lags. Across three experiments (total N = 458), we consistently found that lexical decisions were primed when the same pronunciation of a morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiL – shiL) but were not primed when two different variants of the same morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiR – shiL, where both of these syllables are potential pronunciations of the same morpheme). In other words, we observed identity priming but not morphological priming, unlike other long-lag priming experiments, which almost invariably observe intramodal morphological priming if they test it. This surprising finding suggests that there are boundary conditions on the elicitation of long-lag morphological priming effects.

Toward the morpho-syntactic annotation of an Old English corpus with universal dependencies

The aim of this article is to take the first steps toward the compilation of a treebank of Old English compatible with the framework of Universal Dependencies (UD). Such a treebank will comprise morphological and syntactic annotation of Old English texts adequate for cross-linguistic comparison, diachronic analysis and natural language processing. The article, therefore, engages in four tasks: (i) identifying the Old English exponents of UD lexical categories; (ii) selecting the Old English exponents of UD morphological features; (iii) finding the areas of Old English morphology that require token indexing in the UD format; and (iv) checking on the relevance of the universal set of dependency relations. The data have been extracted from ParCorOEv2, an open access annotated parallel corpus Old English-English. The main conclusions are that the annotation format calls for two additional fields (gloss and morphological relatedness) and that enhanced dependencies are required in order to account for some syntactic phenomena.

Derivation and semantic autonomy

Abstract The article focuses on the polysemy and usage patterns of the Polish lexeme głowa “head” and its diminutive główka. Based on corpus methodology and cognitive linguistics analysis, it is argued that the two lexemes are too autonomous in their meanings than predicted by their morphological relatedness. As the two words cover different semantic domains, we observe that the diminutive suffix has developed a new function which signals lexicalization of meaning toward a non-human semantic domain, for example, material objects, plants, etc. Our research contributes to studies on Polish morphology and lexical semantics and to theoretical research on the polysemy of body part terms.

A developmental perspective on morphological processing in the flankers task

Recent research with adult participants using the flankers task has shown that the recognition of central target words is facilitated by the presence of morphologically related flanker words. Here we explored the development of such morphological flanker effects in two groups of primary school children (average ages = 8 years 6 months and 10 years 3 months) and a group of adult participants. We examined effects of a transparent morphological relation in two conditions: one where the target was the stem and flankers were derivations (e.g., farmer farm farmer) and the other where the flankers were stems and the target was the derived form (e.g., farm farmer farm). Morphological flanker effects were compared with repetition flanker effects with the same set of stimuli (e.g., farm farm farm; farmer farmer farmer), and effects of related flankers were contrasted with the appropriate unrelated flankers. Results revealed no significant effect of morphological relatedness in the two groups of children and a significant effect in the adult group, but only for suffixed targets and stem flankers. Repetition effects for stem targets were found across all groups, whereas repetition effects for suffixed targets were found only in the older children and adults. These results show that morphological processing, in a context involving multiple words presented simultaneously, takes several years to develop and that morphological complexity (stem vs. derived) is a limiting factor for repetition effects in the flankers task with young children.

Ornithodoros (Pavlovskyella) ticks associated with a Rickettsia sp. in Pakistan

BackgroundSoft ticks (Ixodida: Argasidae) are medically important ectoparasites that mainly feed on birds and mammals, which play a key role in their geographic distribution and dispersion. Despite their importance, studies on soft ticks are scarce for many regions and countries of the world, including Pakistan.MethodsIn this study, 2330 soft ticks—179 larvae (7.7%), 850 nymphs (36.4%), 711 males (30.5%) and 590 females (25.3%)—were collected from animal shelters in 18 locations within five districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A subset of the collected ticks was processed for DNA extraction and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the amplification of tick 12S ribosomal DNA (rDNA), 16S rDNA and cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (cox1), and rickettsial 16S rDNA gene fragments. The obtained sequences were used for the construction of a phylogenetic tree.ResultsAll the specimens were morphologically identified as Ornithodoros, and were morphologically similar to Ornithodoros tholozani. The genus was confirmed by sequencing partial 12S rDNA, 16S rDNA and cox1 gene fragments. Additionally, a Rickettsia sp. was detected in some of the collected ticks by PCR targeting 16S rDNA. The morphological relatedness of the tick specimens with O. tholozani was confirmed by phylogenetic analysis, in which the Ornithodoros sp. clustered with Ornithodoros tholozani and Ornithodoros verrucosus, both of which belong to the subgenus Pavlovskyella and have been previously reported from Israel, Ukraine and Iran. The phylogenetic tree also indicated that the Ornithodoros sp. from Pakistan corresponds to an undetermined species. Furthermore, the associated Rickettsia sp. grouped with the limoniae group of Rickettsia species previously reported from Argas japonicus ticks from China.ConclusionsThis is the first molecular study of an Ornithodoros species from Pakistan. Further studies are essential to confirm its identity and possible pathogenicity with regard to its associated microorganisms in the studied region.Graphical abstract

L2 within-language morphological competition during spoken word recognition

ABSTRACT Bilinguals recognize words with shared morphology and phonology cross-linguistically (i.e., cognates) faster than words that do not have these characteristics. Moreover, higher phonological overlap in cognates enhances the effects, which suggests that phonology eases word recognition. However, it is currently unclear whether words compete purely morphologically before spoken word recognition within language and whether proficiency in the L2 modulates the degree of morphological competition. Spanish monolinguals and English L2 learners of Spanish with varying L2 proficiency completed an auditory lexical decision task in Spanish. Stimuli were phonological sequences of Spanish words prior to a recognition point (e.g., /mark/ in /marko/) whose activated cohorts were minimal pairs. Some pairs were morphologically related (e.g., huerto ‘vegetable patch’ versus huerta ‘vegetable garden’), whereas some others had no morphological relationship (e.g., marco ‘frame’ versus marca ‘brand’). Results showed that both groups processed solely phonological competitors in a similar way as they did with morphological competitors. Taken together, these findings suggest that morphological relatedness does not modulate either L1 or L2 spoken word recognition prior to a recognition point when speakers listen to words in absence of context. In addition, the findings suggest that the L2 recognition architecture is qualitatively similar to that of native speakers.

The Effect of Explicit Morphological Instruction on Vocabulary Learning among Yemeni EFL University Students

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of explicit morphological instruction on vocabulary learning among Yemeni EFL students. To achieve the purpose of the study, three empirical research tools were used to collect the data: Nation's Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) Version 1, Morphological Relatedness Test and Morphological Structure Test adapted from Curinga (2014). Experimental design was used in this study. The participants of the study were 40 students randomly selected from the fourth year of the English Department at the College of Education, University of Aden. They were randomly assigned to the experimental group (20) and control group (20). Treatment was given to the experimental group, whereas the control group did not receive such a treatment. At the end, the pre- and post-test scores of the experimental group were compared. Then, the experimental group scores were compared to the control group scores. The results showed that explicit morphological instruction improved students’ morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Furthermore, the results showed that there is a significant relationship between the students' overall morphological knowledge and their vocabulary knowledge. There was a statistically significant difference between the experimental group scores in the pre- and post-tests. There also was a statistically significant difference exists between the experimental group scores and the scores of the control group on the New Vocabulary level test and the Morphological Awareness test. The results also showed that the intervention (morphological instruction) had a significant impact on the participants' performance.

Effects of L1 morphological type on L2 morphological awareness

Previous studies on bilingual children have shown a significant correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) morphological awareness and a unique contribution of morphological awareness in one language to reading performance in the other language, suggesting cross-linguistic influence. However, few studies have compared advanced adult L2 learners from L1s of different morphological types or compared native speakers with advanced learners from a morphologically more complex L1 in their target-language morphological awareness. The current study filled this gap by comparing native English speakers (analytic) and two L2 groups from typologically different L1s: Turkish (agglutinative) and Chinese (isolating). Participants’ morphological awareness was evaluated via a series of tasks, including derivation, affix-choice word and nonword tasks, morphological relatedness, and a suffix-ordering task. Results showed a significant effect of L1 morphological type on L2 morphological awareness. After accounting for L2 proficiency, the Turkish group significantly outperformed the Chinese group in the derivation, morphological relatedness, and suffix-ordering tasks. More importantly, the Turkish group significantly outperformed the native English group in the morphological relatedness task even without accounting for English proficiency. Such results have implications for theories in second language acquisition regarding representation of the bilingual lexicon. In addition, results of the current study underscored the need to guard against the comparative fallacy and highlighted the influential effect of L1 experience on the acquisition of L2 morphological knowledge.

6-month-olds are sensitive to English morphology.

Each language has its unique way to mark grammatical information such as gender, number and tense. For example, English marks number and tense/aspect information with morphological suffixes (e.g., -s or -ed). These morphological suffixes are crucial for language acquisition as they are the basic building blocks of syntax, encode relationships, and convey meaning. Previous research shows that English-learning infants recognize morphological suffixes attached to nonce words by the end of the first year, although even 8-month-olds recognize them when they are attached to known words. These results support an acquisition trajectory where discovery of meaning guides infants' acquisition of morphological suffixes. In this paper, we re-evaluated English-learning infants' knowledge of morphological suffixes in the first year of life. We found that 6-month-olds successfully segmented nonce words suffixed with -s, -ing, -ed and a pseudo-morpheme -sh. Additionally, they related nonce words suffixed with -s, but not -ing, -ed or a pseudo-morpheme -sh and stems. By 8-months, infants were also able to relate nonce words suffixed with -ing and stems. Our results show that infants demonstrate knowledge of morphological relatedness from the earliest stages of acquisition. They do so even in the absence of access to meaning. Based on these results, we argue for a developmental timeline where the acquisition of morphology is, at least, concurrent with the acquisition of phonology and meaning.

Examining the effects of Structured Word Inquiry on the reading and spelling skills of persistently poor Grade 3 readers

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Structured Word Inquiry (SWI; an orthography intervention with a focus on morphology and how morphology interrelates with phonology and etymology) and Simplicity intervention (a novel phonics intervention) on the reading and spelling skills of persistently poor Grade 3 readers.MethodsForty‐eight English‐speaking Canadian children (19 females, Mage = 8.73 years) with persistent reading difficulties were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: SWI, Simplicity and Control. Interventions were delivered by trained graduate students over 10 weeks, 3 times a week, for 30 minutes. Children were tested three times (pre‐test, post‐test and delayed post‐test) on measures of phonological awareness, morphological awareness, reading (Word Reading, Morphological Relatedness and Word Attack) and spelling.ResultsResults of hierarchical linear modelling showed a significant main effect of condition for Morphological Relatedness at post‐test favouring SWI and Simplicity over Control and a significant interaction between a latent variable of all secondary decoding measures and morphological awareness. Effect sizes (Cohen's d) showed medium to large effects for both interventions on primary outcomes of Word Reading and Morphological Relatedness.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that SWI and Simplicity can help persistently poor readers improve in some reading skills, but neither programme is a panacea as a number of children continued to struggle after the intervention.

Morphological Traits Study of Three Indigenous Poultry in Nigeria

Aim: This study investigated relatedness among three indigenous chicken types using morphological features and morphological trait interdependence within three indigenous poultry species in Nigeria.
 Study Design: A complete Random sample design was employed in this study to investigate morphological relatedness.
 Place and Duration of the Study: Birds of reproductive age were sampled from 12 states across Nigeria between February 2013 and November 2015.
 Methodology: Morphological traits were measured according to the FAO description. Nearest neighbor analyses (hierarchical cluster) were done using SPSS 23.0 version.
 Results: The nearest neighbor analyses showed that higher degree of relatedness exists between the wild type chicken and the frizzle feather indigenous chicken type in Nigeria. Traits interdependence was observed between and among the different morphological traits within the different poultry species.
 Conclusion: The characters measured could be of useful genetic importance that may play significant role as markers for selection or breeding programs for improved productivity under free range or scavenging feed resource-based production systems.

Phage vB_BmeM-Goe8 infecting Bacillus megaterium DSM319.

vB_BmeM-Goe8 is a phage preying on Bacillus megaterium. Its genome has a GC content of 38.9%, is 161,583bp in size, and has defined ends consisting of 7436-bp-long terminal repeats. It harbours 11 genes encoding tRNAs and 246 coding DNA sequences, 66 of which were annotated. The particle reveals Myoviridae morphology, and the formation of a double baseplate upon tail sheath contraction indicates morphological relatedness to the group of SPO1-like phages. BLASTn comparison against the NCBI non-redundant nucleotide database revealed that Bacillus phage Mater is the closest relative of vB_BmeM-Goe8.

Opacity, Transparency, and Morphological Priming: A Study of Prefixed Verbs in Dutch.

A basic question for the study of the mental lexicon is whether there are morphological representations and processes that are independent of phonology and semantics. According to a prominent tradition, morphological relatedness requires semantic transparency: semantically transparent words are related in meaning to their stems, while semantically opaque words are not. This study examines the question of morphological relatedness using intra-modal auditory priming by Dutch prefixed verbs. The key conditions involve semantically transparent prefixed primes (e.g., aanbieden 'offer', with the stem bieden, also 'offer') and opaque primes (e.g., verbieden 'forbid'). Results show robust facilitation for both transparent and opaque pairs; phonological (Experiment 1) and semantic (Experiment 2) controls rule out the possibility that these other types of relatedness are responsible for the observed priming effects. The finding of facilitation with opaque primes suggests that morphological processing is independent of semantic and phonological representations. Accordingly, the results are incompatible with theories that make semantic overlap a necessary condition for relatedness, and favor theories in which words may be related in ways that do not require shared meaning. The general discussion considers several specific proposals along these lines, and compares and contrasts questions about morphological relatedness of the type found here with the different but related question of whether there is morphological decomposition of complex forms or not.

Evaluating Genetic Diversity Within Genus Jasminum L. (Oleaceae) Using Intersimple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) Marker

Jasmines are an important group of plants extensively used in the perfumery industry, preparation of garland and for ornamental purposes. To analyze the genetic potential of the group, the authors evaluated its genetic diversity. Intersimple sequence repeats (ISSR) markers were used to evaluate genetic diversity among 40 accessions of 23 Jasminum species including six endemic species. The present study is the first report of the efficacy of 10 shortlisted ISSR markers out of 30 primers screened. Among 23 Jasminum species, J. bignoniaceum revealed maximum genetic diversity and Shannon’s Index. Results revealed that the accessions of Jasminum species are grouped into three major clades, showing close agreement with the morphological relatedness. The diversity analysis also showed that the members of section Alternifolia are the ancestor to the rest of the Jasminum spp. The study provides direction for the future population study on Jasminum spp. This is the first report on the genetic diversity assessment of Indian Jasminum spp. incorporating approximately 50% species.

On Coherence in Quranic Discourse: A Linguistic Analysis

The reader may assume that adjacent sentences in a given running text are coherent, logically ordered, conceptually related, semantically homogeneous, and, most importantly, enjoy continuity of the text pivotal thought. However, this may not be so since the prerequisites of coherence are varied and the criteria are language and culture specific. Cohesion plays a pivotal role in the realisation of coherence, in particular, and the texture of the text, in general. In Quranic Arabic, some of the linguistic mechanisms through which the text producer aims to attain coherence do not occur in other languages. Thus, the contribution to knowledge and originality applies to the current work. The plugging of a research gap in this field of linguistics can be demonstrated in the need to explain the prototypical discourse characteristics of Quranic Arabic. This is represented in the attainment of coherence through (i) morphological relatedness, (ii) the text producer’s selection of a grammatical category such as verb/noun/adjective that is fundamental to the central idea of the statement, (iii) the selection of a specific comparative adjective, (iv) the selection of a specific comparative God’s epithet, and (v) the selection of a specific sentence-final God’s couplet epithets. For the purpose of this paper’s analyses, a sample of Quranic lexical items has been selected from different sūrahs (chapters) and are provided with a discourse-oriented analysis with a view to their attainment of coherence.

The Time Course of Activation of Semantic and Orthographic Information in Morphological Decomposition by Korean Adults and Developing Readers

The current study examined the involvement of semantic and orthographic information in the processing of derived words in Korean Hangul. Sixth grade children and adults participated in four masked priming lexical decision experiments in which the prime duration varied from 36, 48, 57, and 72ms (in Experiments, 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively). Morphological (M), semantic (S), and orthographic (O) relatedness between prime-target pairs were manipulated. There were four types of Korean prime-target pairs: (1) -M-S+O: 도시락-도시, scandal-scan, (2) +M-S+O: 구두쇠-구두, archer-arch, (3) +M+S+O: 음악가-음악, bravely-brave, and (4) -M+S-O: 반대-이의, accuse-blame. There were several key findings: (1) adults showed significant priming effects at 57 and 72ms in +M+S+O and significant priming effects at 72 ms in +M-S+O; (2) less skilled readers showed significant facilitation at 36ms in +M+S+O; and (3) in -M-S+O, both skilled and less skilled readers show significant inhibition across four prime durations. The different time course of +M+S+O priming for adults and children may be due to developing readers’ smaller lexicon and less competition for semantic activation of the monosyllabic suffix (e.g., 가 in 음악가), which is a homograph in Korean Hangul. The consistent orthographic inhibition for both age groups suggest that orthographic information is activated early and continues to play an important role throughout the course of Korean visual word recognition. The current study extends previous research with readers of Roman alphabets to readers of an alpha-syllabary orthography written in a nonlinear spatial layout with more clear-cut syllable boundaries. Taken together, it appears that the involvement of semantic and orthographic information in the decomposition of morphologically complex word may vary depending on the characteristics of the orthography.

Children benefit from morphological relatedness independently of orthographic relatedness when they learn to spell new words

We examined whether French children in Grades 3 and 5 (aged ∼ 8–11 years) benefit from morphological relatedness beyond orthographic relatedness in the implicit learning of new spellings. Children silently read stories that included two target nonwords. One nonword was in an opaque condition in that nothing in the story could justify the spelling of its final sound. The other nonword was in either a morphological condition (for children in the morphological group) or an orthographic condition (for children in the orthographic group). In the morphological condition, the final spelling of the target nonword was justified by two morphologically related nonwords. For example, coirardage, obtained by adding the suffixage to coirard, designates the coirard’s song and justifies the final silentdofcoirard. The orthographic condition included two nonwords that were orthographically but not morphologically related to the target. For example, the coirard’s song wascoirardume, obtained by addingume,which is not a suffix, tocoirard. Then, 30 min after reading the stories, children were asked to choose the correct spelling of each nonword from among three phonologically plausible alternatives (e.g.,coirard, coirars, coirar). In the morphological group, both third and fifth graders more often selected the correct spellings for items presented in the morphological condition than for items presented in the opaque condition. In the orthographic group, the results were very similar in the opaque and orthographic conditions.The findings show that the benefit of morphological relatedness in the implicit learning of new spellings cannot be reduced to orthographic relatedness.