Learning, consolidating, and generalising novel morphology
Despite a central role for morphological knowledge in supporting linguistic generalisation, the neural representations supporting its learning remain largely unexplored. This thesis addressed this gap by exploring the role of memory consolidation in morphological learning and generalisation. In three experiments, adult participants learned an artificial language in which stems (e.g. gleet, shiln) combined with plural affixes (e.g. âaff, -opp; gleetaff, shilnopp) to refer to the occupation of multiple male and female characters. Mimicking properties of morphological systems in natural languages, the plurals varied in their phonological consistency/ambiguity and type/token frequency. Two sets of plurals, distinguished by gender, were trained on two successive days. Experiment 1 revealed that generalisation to novel phonologically ambiguous forms measured on the second day showed a greater influence of token frequency for plurals trained on the previous day, suggesting overnight changes in their underlying representations. Experiment 2 examined this effect further by using fMRI to compare the neural representations underlying plurals learned on the day of scanning or on the previous day. Representational Similarity
Vinals-Castonguay, Lydia
Learning ; memory consolidation ; generalisation ; inflectional morphology ; fMRI
Learning, consolidating, and generalising novel morphology. Despite a central role for morphological knowledge in supporting linguistic generalisation, the neural representations supporting its learning remain largely unexplored. This thesis addressed this gap by exploring the role of memory consolidation in morphological learning and generalisation. In three experiments, adult participants learned an artificial language in which stems (e.g. gleet, shiln) combined with plural affixes (e.g. âaff, -opp; gleetaff, shilnopp) to refer to the occupation of multiple male and female characters. Mimicking properties of morphological systems in natural languages, the plurals varied in their phonological consistency/ambiguity and type/token frequency. Two sets of plurals, distinguished by gender, were trained on two successive days. Experiment 1 revealed that generalisation to novel phonologically ambiguous forms measured on the second day showed a greater influence of token frequency for plurals trained on the previous day, suggesting overnight changes in their underlying representations. Experiment 2 examined this effect further by using fMRI to compare the neural representations underlying plurals learned on the day of scanning or on the previous day. Representational Similarity
learning consolidate generalise novel morphology despite central_role morphological knowledge support linguistic generalisation neural representation support learn remain_largely unexplored address_gap explore_role memory consolidation morphological learning generalisation adult participant learn artificial_language stem combine plural affix refer occupation multiple male_female character property morphological system natural_language plural vary phonological consistency ambiguity type_token frequency two_set plural distinguish gender train revealed generalisation novel phonologically ambiguous form measure show great_influence token frequency plural train suggest change underlie representation examined effect use compare neural representation underlie plural learn day scan representational similarity