Li8 Evidence for Morphological Structure SHORT

8/10/2019 Li8 Evidence for Morphological Structure SHORT

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Li8Structure of English

Evidence for morphologicalstructure


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Morphology

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have tolook at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, its madeup of two separate words - mank and ind. What dothese words mean? Its a mystery, and thats why sois mankind. Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts


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Morphemes

Morphology is the study of morphemes andtheir behavior.

A morpheme is the minimal unit of meaning.dogs contains 2 morphemes:

1 d g quadruped of the genus canis

2 -z plural Note: morphemes words

A word is the smallest element that can

occur in isolation.


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New singularsNew morphemesPsycholinguistic evidence

Rule-governed behaviorPriming studiesEvent Related Potentials Speech errorsDisorders

Evidence for morphological

decomposition and storage


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New singulars

indice, homo sapien


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New morphemes

-a/oholic-burger

-gate: Watergate, Fornigate-head:

pothead, metalhead, techhead,gearhead, theoryhead,crackhead, hockey head

Mc-:McMansion, mcjob, mcnews

It's true, I'm a

Rageaholic...I just can'tlive without Rageahol!


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McDonald's not lovin' M c J o b dictionary definitionCHICAGO, Illinois (AP, 11-2003) -- McDonald's says itdeserves a break from the unflattering way the latestMerriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary depicts its job

opportunities. Among some 10,000 new additions toan updated version released in June was the term"McJob," defined as "low paying and dead-endwork." In an open letter to Merriam-Webster,McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo said the term is "aninaccurate description of restaurant employment"and "a slap in the face to the 12 million men and

women" who work in the restaurant industry. Thecompany e-mailed the letter to media organizationsFriday, and it also was published in the Nov. 3 edition ofan industry trade publication. Cantalupo also wrote that"more than 1,000 of the men and women who own andoperate McDonald's restaurants today got their start byserving customers behind the counter. McDonald's, the

world's largest restaurant chain, has more than 30,000restaurants and more than 400,000 employees. WaltRiker, a spokesman for McDonald's, said the OakBrook, Illinois-based fast-food giant also isconcerned that "McJob" closely resembles McJOBS,the company's training program for mentally andphysically challenged people.

"McJOBS is trademarked and we've notified themthat legally that's an issue for us as well," Riker said.

McJob (m kdZAb) n . A low-paying job thatrequires little skill and

provides little opportunityfor advancement.Source: Merriam-Webster

Online
http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/http://www.merriam-webstercollegiate.com/


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Psycholinguisticevidence


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Over-regularization

went goed wentHappens c. late twosSuggests acquisition of morphologicalrules


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Wug testsBerko 1958 3 surface manifestations of English regular plural /-z/: [z], [s],[z] When/how do children learn these rules?Test paradigm

Children are presented with a pretend creature and told, "This is awug."

Another wug is revealed, and the researcher says, "Now there aretwo of them. There are two __."

ResultsVery young children are baffled by the question and are unable toanswer correctly, responding with e.g. two wug." Children in grade 1 were almost fully competent with both [s] and[z].Both preschool and first- grade children dealt poorly with [z],giving the correct answer less than half the time, possibly becauseit occurs in the most restrictive context.

Major findingThe first experimental proof that young children have extracted

generalizable morphological rules from the language around them.


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Productive irregulars Al Jallad, Flint, and Richardson 2005 Subjects come up with past tense for unfamiliar V.

1. Jim BLINGS everyday.Yesterday John __________________.

2. Alan CHINES everyday.Yesterday Alan __________________.

Subjects in the experiment26 children: age 6-7 (oral test)44 adults (written questionnaire)

Sample Over-Irregularizationschildren

pake pakededbling blung, blangflink flunk

frim frandadults

mang mungshride shrudebling blankmorget morgottind tind

Overall Rate of Irregular forms supplied

Individual Differences in Irregularization: bars showpercentages of subjects making 0-20% irregulars,20-40% irregulars etc.


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ERPsMcKinnon et al. 2003.Observation

Pronounceable non-words (flermuf) elicit larger-amplitude N400 components than words(muffler).

PredictionIf readers treat non-words containing non-productive morphemes (in-ceive) as unanalysedwholes, then these non-words should elicitlarger N400s than matched words (receive).

Results

Bound-stem non-words elicit a brain responsehighly similar to that elicited by real words.

ConclusionMorphological decomposition andrepresentation extend to non-productivemorphemes.


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Broth:Brothel:BrotherRastle et al. 2004

Participants made visual lexical decisions to stem targets preceded bymasked primes sharing

(a) a semantically-transparent morphological relationship with the target(e.g., cleaner-CLEAN);

(b) an apparent morphological relationship, but no semantic relationship, withthe target (e.g., corner-CORN);(c) a non-morphological form relationship with the target (e.g., brothel-BROTH).

Results showed significant and equivalent masked priming effects

in cases in which primes and targets appeared to bemorphologically related, and priming in these conditions could bedistinguished from non-morphological form priming.These findings suggest a level of representation at which apparentlycomplex words are decomposed based on their morpho-orthographic

properties.


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Morphologicalspeech errors


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Morphological errors

Morpheme exchange slicely thinned

Feature shift have to went for had to go

Faulty access have teachen for have taught concludement for conclusion

Experimentally controlled morphologicalerrors


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Janssen and Humphreys 2002General logic: If a string of phonemes with an identifiable meaning can move

independently during a speech error, it is a production unit, with aseparate, independent representation at some cognitive level.

Inflectional morphemes (e.g. -ed, -ing, -s) are much more error prone thanderivational morphemes (e.g. -er, -ness, -able, -ion) (Garrett 1980,Humphreys, 2002).Can we also find experimental speech error evidence of derivationaldecomposition?Prediction :

If derivational morphemes are stored independently from their stems,more morphological speech errors should occur when -er is a realmorpheme than when it is only a pseudo-morpheme.

English derivational -e r

cpv adj nice+er

agentive work+er

pseudo-morph summer


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Methodelicited morphological errors from speakers by presenting a series of wordquads, made up of two pairs. Speakers read these words silently, afterwhich they disappeared. Speakers were occasionally cued to respond aloud,as quickly as possible, to the immediately preceding item. Speakers had tothen either repeat the previous phrases exactly, or had to swap wordsbetween the phrases. The critical pairs each consisted of an initial ller word

plus a critical word stem or stem+affix.


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Results

More affix errors occurred on the morphologically complexforms than on the pseudo-morphs.Conclusion : derivational affixes are also stored as separatemorphemes.


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Morphologicaldisorders


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Lexical disorderBadecker 2001CSS (65 years old) suffered a left cerebro-vascular accident in 1990,

resulting in lexical impairments manifested in reading, repetition, and oraland written naming tasks.

Apart from word- finding problems, CSSs spoken output is fluent and he

exhibits no apparent comprehension impairment.

picture n ming

butterfly

n ming from definition

Slender-bodied insect withbroad, often brightly-colored

wings.

butterfly

monomorphemes: 80% correct

doctor flysun

wheel pill

polymorphemes: 50% correct!


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Semantic disorders

Deep dyslexia = semantic errors duringreadingBuchanan et al. 2003

Deep dyslexic patient (JO, 48, L temporo-parietal lobectomy)

Acquired reading disorder characterized by production of:morphological errors (e.g., SLEEP read as SLEEPING)

semantic errors (e.g. HEART read as BLOOD)


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Deep dyslexiaRastle et al. 2005

Observation:Deep dyslexics often make morphological errors in reading aloude.g. sexist read as sexy

Two competing explanations:1. representations are morphologically structured2. low imageability/frequency word modified to visually similar word of

higher imageability/frequency) (Funnell 1987)Prediction:

Theory 1 predicts more stem errors with morphologically complexwords ( killer ) than with pseudosuffixed words ( corner ) andmonomorphemic words ( cornea ) when one equalizes forimageability and frequency.Theory 2 predicts no difference between these 3 categories.

Result:Theory 1 (but not Theory 2) supported


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Regular vs. irregularUllman et al. 1997, Ullman 2001 propose that:the left inferior frontal cortex (along with the basal ganglia) is involved in rule-based

computationsIrregular forms dealt with differentlyPrediction:

A lesion to this region should impair only regular morphological processes, sparing the abilityto produce irregular morphology.

Test:Four types of patients: Parkinsons, Alzheimers, anterior aphasics, and posterior aphasicsPatients were asked to perform a sentence completion task requiring the production of a verbin the past tenseE.g. Every day I dig a hole. Just like every day, yesterday I ____ a hole

Results:anterior aphasics and Parkinson patients performed worse with regular than irregular verbsthe opposite for posterior aphasics and Alzheimer patients

Conclusion:Results consistent with theory that the left frontal cortex and basal ganglia are involved inrule-based language processing but not in the processing of irregular morphology, and thattemporal lobe areas are implicated in the storage of lexical forms.

But


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Regular vs. irregular

Problem with Ullmans theory Agrammatic (Brocas) aphasics who performworse on irregular than regular morphological

transformations (producing irregular V forms)patient RC (Shapiro & Caramazza 2003)patient MR (Laiacona & Caramazza 2004)Spanish-Catalan bilinguals (Caramazza et al. 2004)

Consistent with the classical view that left inferiorfrontal cortex is involved in morphosyntacticprocessing and not just in rule-based

transformations.


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ConclusionsHumans decompose words into morphemesand store them as such.Both regular and irregular/restricted morphologyinvolve rule-governed (de)composition.

blang, inceive, Brocas aphasics

Humans look for morphological structure evenwhen there isnt any.

cheeseburger, corner


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Li8 Evidence for Morphological Structure SHORT

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