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Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs
The lexical representation of complex words in Indo-European languages is generally assumed to depend on semantic compositionality. This study investigated whether semantically compositional and noncompositional derivations are accessed via their constituent units or as whole words. In an overt visu...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2015
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341544/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25767442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00062 |
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author | Smolka, Eva Gondan, Matthias Rösler, Frank |
author_facet | Smolka, Eva Gondan, Matthias Rösler, Frank |
author_sort | Smolka, Eva |
collection | PubMed |
description | The lexical representation of complex words in Indo-European languages is generally assumed to depend on semantic compositionality. This study investigated whether semantically compositional and noncompositional derivations are accessed via their constituent units or as whole words. In an overt visual priming experiment (300 ms stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA), event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for verbs (e.g., ziehen, “pull”) that were preceded by purely semantically related verbs (e.g., zerren, “drag”), by morphologically related and semantically compositional verbs (e.g., zuziehen, “pull together”), by morphologically related and semantically noncompositional verbs (e.g., erziehen, “educate”), by orthographically similar verbs (e.g., zielen, “aim”), or by unrelated verbs (e.g., tarnen, “mask”). Compared to the unrelated condition, which evoked an N400 effect with the largest amplitude at centro-parietal recording sites, the N400 was reduced in all other conditions. The rank order of N400 amplitudes turned out as follows: morphologically related and semantically compositional ≈ morphologically related and semantically noncompositional < purely semantically related < orthographically similar < unrelated. Surprisingly, morphologically related primes produced similar N400 modulations—irrespective of their semantic compositionality. The control conditions with orthographic similarity confirmed that these morphological effects were not the result of a simple form overlap between primes and targets. Our findings suggest that the lexical representation of German complex verbs refers to their base form, regardless of meaning compositionality. Theories of the lexical representation of German words need to incorporate this aspect of language processing in German. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4341544 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-43415442015-03-12 Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs Smolka, Eva Gondan, Matthias Rösler, Frank Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience The lexical representation of complex words in Indo-European languages is generally assumed to depend on semantic compositionality. This study investigated whether semantically compositional and noncompositional derivations are accessed via their constituent units or as whole words. In an overt visual priming experiment (300 ms stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA), event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for verbs (e.g., ziehen, “pull”) that were preceded by purely semantically related verbs (e.g., zerren, “drag”), by morphologically related and semantically compositional verbs (e.g., zuziehen, “pull together”), by morphologically related and semantically noncompositional verbs (e.g., erziehen, “educate”), by orthographically similar verbs (e.g., zielen, “aim”), or by unrelated verbs (e.g., tarnen, “mask”). Compared to the unrelated condition, which evoked an N400 effect with the largest amplitude at centro-parietal recording sites, the N400 was reduced in all other conditions. The rank order of N400 amplitudes turned out as follows: morphologically related and semantically compositional ≈ morphologically related and semantically noncompositional < purely semantically related < orthographically similar < unrelated. Surprisingly, morphologically related primes produced similar N400 modulations—irrespective of their semantic compositionality. The control conditions with orthographic similarity confirmed that these morphological effects were not the result of a simple form overlap between primes and targets. Our findings suggest that the lexical representation of German complex verbs refers to their base form, regardless of meaning compositionality. Theories of the lexical representation of German words need to incorporate this aspect of language processing in German. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-02-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4341544/ /pubmed/25767442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00062 Text en Copyright © 2015 Smolka, Gondan and Rösler. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution and reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Neuroscience Smolka, Eva Gondan, Matthias Rösler, Frank Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs |
title | Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs |
title_full | Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs |
title_fullStr | Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs |
title_full_unstemmed | Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs |
title_short | Take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in German complex verbs |
title_sort | take a stand on understanding: electrophysiological evidence for stem access in german complex verbs |
topic | Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4341544/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25767442 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00062 |
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