Morphology in the mental lexicon : frequency, productivity and derivation
This thesis examines a critical issue in psycholinguistics, of whether the fundamental unit of representation in the mental lexicon is the morpheme. Are complex words, such as <i>darkness, </i>processed as whole forms or are they decomposed into their component morphemes <i>dark </i>and <i>-ness? </i>Research on this topic has provided preliminary evidence for decomposition by showing that response times to polymorphemic words such as <i>darkness </i>are influenced by summed frequency of the other words in the language containing the root morpheme (e.g. <i>darken, darkly, darkish, </i>etc). This thesis uses multivariate regression techniques to explore in greater depth than previously, both in terms of numbers of items and numbers of variables, the role of morphology in lexical access. It explores not only whether words are influenced by the summed frequency of the morpheme but also whether whole word frequency is important. It also asks whether for singular nouns the word-form frequency (the frequency of the form itself) or the lemma frequency (the summed frequency of all inflectional variants) is the better predictor of response times. Additionally, the role of meaning relationships between words sharing
Ford, M. A.
Morphology in the mental lexicon : frequency, productivity and derivation. This thesis examines a critical issue in psycholinguistics, of whether the fundamental unit of representation in the mental lexicon is the morpheme. Are complex words, such as <i>darkness, </i>processed as whole forms or are they decomposed into their component morphemes <i>dark </i>and <i>-ness? </i>Research on this topic has provided preliminary evidence for decomposition by showing that response times to polymorphemic words such as <i>darkness </i>are influenced by summed frequency of the other words in the language containing the root morpheme (e.g. <i>darken, darkly, darkish, </i>etc). This thesis uses multivariate regression techniques to explore in greater depth than previously, both in terms of numbers of items and numbers of variables, the role of morphology in lexical access. It explores not only whether words are influenced by the summed frequency of the morpheme but also whether whole word frequency is important. It also asks whether for singular nouns the word-form frequency (the frequency of the form itself) or the lemma frequency (the summed frequency of all inflectional variants) is the better predictor of response times. Additionally, the role of meaning relationships between words sharing
morphology mental_lexicon frequency productivity derivation examines critical issue psycholinguistics whether fundamental unit representation mental_lexicon morpheme complex word process whole form decompose component morpheme dark ness topic provide_preliminary evidence decomposition show response time word influence frequency word language contain root morpheme darkly etc multivariate regression technique explore great_depth previously term number item number_variable role morphology lexical_access explores whether word influence frequency morpheme also whether whole word_frequency important also ask_whether singular noun word_form frequency frequency form lemma frequency frequency inflectional variant good predictor response time additionally role mean relationship word share