Beyond decomposition: processing zero-derivations in English visual word recognition

Wheeldon, L., Schuster, S., Pliatsikas, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7093-1773, Malpass, D. and Lahiri, A. (2019) Beyond decomposition: processing zero-derivations in English visual word recognition. Cortex, 116. pp. 176-191. ISSN 0010-9452 doi: 10.1016/j.cortex.2018.09.003

Abstract/Summary

Four experiments investigate the effects of covert morphological complexity during visual word recognition. Zero-derivations occur in English in which a change of word class occurs without any change in surface form (e.g., a boat-to boat; to soak-a soak). Boat is object-derived and is a basic noun (N), whereas soak is action-derived and is a basic verb (V). As the suffix {-ing} is only attached to verbs, deriving boating from its base, requires two steps, boat(N)>boat(V)>boating(V), while soaking can be derived in one step from soak(V). Experiments 1 to 3 used masked priming at different prime durations to test matched sets of one and two-step verbs for morphological (soaking-SOAK) and semantic priming (jolting-SOAK). Experiment 4 employed a delayed-priming paradigm in which the full verb forms (soaking and boating) were primed by noun and verb phrases (a soak/to soak, a boat/to boat). In both paradigms, different morphological priming patterns were observed for one-step and two-step verbs, demonstrating that morphological processing cannot be reduced to surface form-based segmentation.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-pure-test.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/78958
Identification Number/DOI	10.1016/j.cortex.2018.09.003
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Central Services Life Sciences > School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences > Department of Clinical Language Sciences
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