Morphological constraints in children’s spoken language comprehension: A visual world study of plurals inside compounds in English

Many previous studies have shown that the human language processor is capable of rapidly integrating information from different sources during reading or listening. Yet, little is known about how this ability develops from child to adulthood. To gain insight into how children (in comparison to adults) handle different kinds of linguistic information during on-line language comprehension, the current study investigates a well-known morphological phenomenon that is subject to both structural and semantic constraints, the plurals-in-compounds effect, i.e. the dislike of plural (specifically regular plural) modifiers inside compounds (e.g. rats eater). We examined 96 seven-to-twelve-year-old children and a control group of 32 adults measuring their eye-gaze changes in response to compound-internal plural and singular forms. Our results indicate that children rely more upon structural properties of language (in the present case, morphological cues) early in development and that the ability to efficiently integrate information from multiple sources takes time for children to reach adult-like levels.     

Meaning Analysis of Inflected Words

Two hypotheses concerning the meaning analysis of written inflected words were tested: Either analysis is governed by the stem, or the stem and the suffix receive simultaneous semantic analysis. The method involved a new semantic decision (picture-written word matching) paradigm utilizing the spatial information carried by Finnish locative case endings. Results supported the first hypothesis. In contrast to certain claims in the recent morphological processing literature, suffix-related semantic information is secondary to the stem and it becomes available later than stem-related semantic information.     

Access to perceptual and conceptual information in the left and right hemispheres.

It is assumed that there are hemispheric differences in the type of information available for the processing of word meanings, e.g., categorical or associative information. In the present experiment, we used a semantic priming paradigm to examine whether perceptual or conceptual properties of word meanings would be associated with the left or right hemisphere. The present experiment also examined time-course activation of these properties across the hemispheres, using short and long stimulus onset asynchronies. The results indicated that perceptual information is available only in the right hemisphere at an early rather than a late stage of target processing, while conceptual information is available in both hemispheres at both early and later stages of target processing. It is suggested that the imagery system in the right hemisphere may contribute to the perceptual priming observed in this hemisphere.     

Enemies and friends in the neighborhood: orthographic similarity effects in semantic categorization

Studies investigating orthographic similarity effects in semantic tasks have produced inconsistent results. The authors investigated orthographic similarity effects in animacy decision and in contrast with previous studies, they took semantic congruency into account. In Experiments 1 and 2, performance to a target (cat) was better if a previously studied neighbor (rat) was congruent (i.e., belonged to the same animate-inanimate category) than it was if it was incongruent (e.g., mat). In Experiments 3 and 4, performance was better for targets with more preexisting congruent neighbors than for targets with more preexisting incongruent neighbors. These results demonstrate that orthographic similarity effects in semantic categorization are conditional on semantic congruency. This strongly suggests that semantic information becomes available before orthographic processing has been completed.     

Processing biological gender and number information during Chinese pronoun resolution: ERP evidence for functional differentiation

There have been a number of behavioral and neural studies on the processing of syntactic gender and number agreement information, marked by different morpho-syntactic features during sentence comprehension. By using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, the present study investigated whether the processing of semantic gender information and the processing of notional number information can be differentiated and to what extent they might interact during Chinese pronoun resolution. The pronoun (with singular form in Experiment 1 and with plural form in Experiment 2) in a sentence matched its antecedent or mismatched it with respect to either biological gender or notional number or both. While the number mismatch elicited a P600 effect starting from 550 ms (for singular pronoun) or 400 ms (for plural pronoun) post-onset of the pronoun, the gender mismatch elicited an earlier (for singular) and larger (for both singular and plural) P600 effect. More importantly, the double mismatch produced a P600 effect identical to the effect elicited by the single gender mismatch. These results demonstrate that biological gender information and notional number information are processed differentially and have different processing priorities during Chinese pronoun resolution.     

Different time courses of integrative semantic processing for plural and singular nouns: implications for theories of sentence processing

The research investigated the time course of integrative semantic processing during sentence processing. Reading time was measured on sentences containing an NP composed of an adjective and a noun whose combined meaning was plausible or anomalous (Experiment 1) or was typical or atypical (Experiment 2). The noun in the NP was either plural or singular. Plural nouns were expected to be more rapidly integrated with a preceding adjective than singular nouns because plural nouns can be ruled out as the first noun in a noun compound more rapidly than singular nouns. The results confirmed this prediction, showing that the effects of semantic plausibility and typicality were observed immediately during the processing of plural nouns, but were observed at a delay following the processing of singular nouns. Implications for theories of sentence processing are discussed.     

Lexical word formation in children with grammatical SLI: a grammar-specific versus an input-processing deficit?

An ongoing controversy is whether an input-processing deficit or a grammar-specific deficit causes specific language impairment (SLI) in children. Previous studies have focussed on SLI childrens' omission of inflectional morphemes or impaired performance on language tasks, but such data can be accounted for by either theory. To distinguish between these theories we study compound formation in a subgroup of SLI children with 'grammatical (G)-SLI'. An input-processing account (e.g. Leonard, L. (1998). Children with specific language impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), in which perception and production of inflections requires extra processing resources, would predict that G-SLI children will omit the regular plural -s in compounds (e.g. rat-eater). A grammar-specific deficit account (e.g. Ullman, M. & Gopnik, M. (1994) The production of inflectional morphology in hereditary specific language impairment. The McGill Working Papers in Linguistics, 10, 81-118; van der Lely, H. K. J. & Ullman, M. (1996). The computation and representation of past-tense morphology in normally developing and specifically language impaired children. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes & A. Zukowski, Proceedings of the 20th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 816-827). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press), in which G-SLI children are impaired in regular inflectional morphology, would predict that G-SLI children will produce regular plural -s forms inside compounds (e.g. *rats-eater). We compared the responses of 16 G-SLI subjects (aged 10 years 4 months to 18 years) with those of 36 normally developing control children (24 matched on language ability and 12 matched on age and cognitive ability). All the groups produced irregular plural nouns in compounds (mice-eater). The normally developing children and teenagers rarely, if ever. produced regular plural nouns inside compounds (*rats-eater), whereas the G-SLI subjects did so often. This pattern of results conflicts with the predictions ofthe input-processing deficit account. The findings support the grammar-specific deficit hypothesis. The data rovide further evidence that specialized grammatical abilities may be differentially impaired within the language system.     

基于熟悉性的项目间语义关系再认

在项目间语义关系的熟悉性研究中, 一个关键问题是熟悉性效应依赖于哪种信息的加工, 关系概念还是抽象结构?研究通过两个实验, 借助无线索回忆再认范式(the recognition without cued recall paradigm, 简称RWCR范式)和四词类比材料, 采用混合设计, 直接分离与比较关系概念和抽象结构的加工对RWCR效应的影响。结果发现, 关系概念作为测验线索能够引发显著RWCR效应, 但仅仅学习关系概念却不能;只有学习关系概念的结构化材料时, 才能引发显著RWCR效应。该结果表明, 项目间语义关系的熟悉性过程与结构信息有关。     

Developmental Changes in Semantic Verbal Fluency: Analyses of Word Productivity as a Function of Time,Clustering, and Switching

We investigated age-related improvement in semantic category verbal fluency (VF) in 309 Dutch schoolchildren attending first to ninth grade. Quantitative analyses of number of correct responses as a function of time as well as qualitative analyses of clustering and switching were conducted. Overall, Dutch VF task performance, i.e., number of correct responses over 60 seconds, was not established before mid-adolescence. This is in line with previously published studies, using VF number of correct responses over 60 seconds as the main outcome measure and examining VF task performance across other cultures and languages (e.g., Italian, French, Hebrew). Next, mean cluster size, a measure of lexico-semantic knowledge, was not established until at least grade 3. In contrast, performance on the VF outcome measures “number of switches/clusters” was established at least 4 years later. Qualitative and quantitative Design Fluency (DF) outcome measures support the notion that the numbers of switches/clusters are valid measures of higher order cognitive functions, such as strategy use and cognitive flexibility. In line of this, VF number of correct responses during 16–60 seconds, a measure of controlled information processing, is established at least 2 years later (i.e., grades 7–8) than number of correct responses during the first 15 seconds time slide, a measure of automatic processing. Finally, environment, i.e., the level of parental education, primarily affected automatic and lexico-semantic knowledge. No effects of sex on VF performance were found. These data suggest that the alternative scoring methods of VF tasks can be used to acquire knowledge on development of lower and higher order cognitive functions in healthy children and the influence of the environment on it.     

Is Passive Syntax Semantically Constrained? Evidence From Adult Grammaticality Judgment and Comprehension Studies

To explain the phenomenon that certain English verbs resist passivization (e.g., *£5 was cost by the book), Pinker (1989) proposed a semantic constraint on the passive in the adult grammar: The greater the extent to which a verb denotes an action where a patient is affected or acted upon, the greater the extent to which it is compatible with the passive. However, a number of comprehension and production priming studies have cast doubt upon this claim, finding no difference between highly affecting agent‐patient/theme‐experiencer passives (e.g., Wendy was kicked/frightened by Bob) and non‐actional experiencer theme passives (e.g., Wendy was heard by Bob). The present study provides evidence that a semantic constraint is psychologically real, and is readily observed when more fine‐grained independent and dependent measures are used (i.e., participant ratings of verb semantics, graded grammaticality judgments, and reaction time in a forced‐choice picture‐matching comprehension task). We conclude that a semantic constraint on the passive must be incorporated into accounts of the adult grammar.     

二、三和五年级儿童对形旁语义的加工

结合启动范式和汉字判断任务,通过操纵目标字语义透明度,在汉字阅读过程探查了二、三、五年级儿童对形旁语义的加工。采用 3×2×2 混合实验设计,自变量为被试类型（小学二、三、五年级儿童）、启动字类型（字形相关 vs. 无关）和目标字类型（透明字 vs. 模糊字）。结果发现启动字类型、目标字类型和年级三者交互作用显著。随后分析在三五年级儿童中发现了显著的独立于字形的形旁语义启动效应,启动字中的共享形旁对模糊字的识别产生了更大的抑制作用,而在二年级儿童中并没有发现这种效应。说明形旁语义在儿童的心理词典中存在独立表征,可以被激活并促进儿童对汉字的识别,但是需要儿童的阅读理解能力发展到一定程度。     

Tracking hierarchical processing in morphological decomposition with brain potentials

One important debate in psycholinguistics concerns the nature of morphological decomposition processes in visual word recognition (e.g., darkness = {dark} + {-ness}). One theory claims that these processes arise during orthographic analysis and prior to accessing meaning (Rastle & Davis, 2008), and another argues that these processes arise through greater temporal overlap between the activation of orthographic and semantic information (Feldman, O'Connor, & Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009). This issue has been the subject of intense debate in studies using masked priming but has yet to be resolved unequivocally. The present study takes another approach to resolving this controversy by examining brain potentials as participants made lexical decisions to unprimed morphological (darkness), pseudomorphological (corner), and nonmorphological (brothel) stimuli. Results revealed a difference from ～190 ms between the nonmorphological condition and the other 2 conditions (which showed no differentiation), a likely correlate of morphological processing reliant exclusively on orthography. Only 60-70 ms later was there evidence of the activation of semantic information, when the pseudomorphological condition diverged from the other 2 conditions. These results provide unambiguous support for a hierarchical model of morphological processing whereby decomposition is based initially on orthographic analysis and is only later constrained by semantic information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Modality effects in compounding with English inflectional morphology

The treatment of plural morphemes in English noun–noun compounds is significant because it provides a test case for competing theories of language acquisition and representation. Even when the first noun in a compound refers to plural items, native speakers frequently use the singular form ( Murphy, 2000 ). Sometimes, they will use the irregular plural form (‘mice chaser’) but very rarely are regular plurals (‘rats chaser’) used as the first noun in a compound. This effect has been found with native English‐ speaking children ( Gordon, 1985 ; Nicoladis, 2000 ; Oetting & Rice, 1993 ; van der Lely & Christian, 2000 ); native English‐speaking teenagers ( van der Lely & Christian, 2000 ); and native English‐speaking adults ( Lardiere & Schwartz, 1997 ; Murphy, 2000 ). The apparent dissociation between regular and irregular plurals (i.e. that irregular plurals are included before a second noun but regular plurals are almost never included before a second noun) is thought to be due to innate morphological constraints ( Marcus, Brinkmann, Clahsen, Weise, & Pinker, 1995 ). Such constraints predict that all items of regular morphology should be treated differently from all items of irregular morphology by language users in all situations. However, if external factors such as input and response modality affect the number of plurals included in compounds, then this questions the internal constraint‐based explanations of compounding and encourages investigation of how external factors might influence the number of plurals included in compounds.     

Selective processing of threat cues in panic disorder

A computerized Stroop color-naming paradigm was used to investigate attentional biases for selectively processing threat information in panic-disordered patients. Subjects named the colors of neutral words (e.g. TYPICAL), fear words (e.g. PANIC), bodily sensation words (e.g. HEARTBEAT), and catastrophe words (e.g. HEART ATTACK). To control for familiarity with threat concepts, we used clinicians who treat panic disorder as normal control subjects. In contrast to normal controls, panic patients exhibited greater Stroop interference for all threat words, especially those associated with catastrophe. Stroop interference waned during the course of the experiment, thereby indicating habituation to the semantic content of the cues. These findings suggest that panic disorder, like other anxiety disorders, is associated with an attentional bias for processing threatening information.     

Phonological and morphological consistency in the acquisition of vowel duration spelling in Dutch and German

In Dutch, vowel duration spelling is phonologically consistent but morphologically inconsistent (e.g., paar-paren). In German, it is phonologically inconsistent but morphologically consistent (e.g., Paar-Paare). Contrasting the two orthographies allowed us to examine the role of phonological and morphological consistency in the acquisition of the same orthographic feature. Dutch and German children in Grades 2 to 4 spelled singular and plural word forms and in a second task identified the correct spelling of singular and plural forms of the same nonword. Dutch children were better in word spelling, but German children outperformed the Dutch children in nonword selection. Also, whereas German children performed on a similar level for singular and plural items, Dutch children showed a large discrepancy. The results indicate that children use phonological and morphological rules from an early age but that the developmental balance between the two sources of information is constrained by the specific orthography.     

Selective impairment of grammatical morphology due to induced stress in normal listeners: implications for aphasia

The traditional clinical picture for English nonfluent aphasics has generally presented the deficit as one of total loss of control over grammatical morphology, with some sparing of word order. This is at odds with recent research involving nonfluent aphasic speakers of highly inflected languages, which has shown that agrammatic performance is characterized by morphological substitution rather than omission errors. If the deficit associated with focal brain damage cannot be adequately accounted for in syndrome-specific ways, we may need to look for language-specific processing explanations. One such explanation has to do with language-specific response to global processing difficulty. The current experiment is designed to study the effects of a stress-related limitation on morphological processing. Normal speakers of a language with a relatively rich morphological system (German) are compared with those of a comparatively impoverished system (English) on different forms of a sentence comprehension task. In one form, "clean" stimuli permit full reliance on all available cues to meaning in each language. In another test, a low-level noise mask partially obscured the stimulus sentences. English speakers, who rely almost exclusively on word order cues, were not affected by the noise manipulation. German speakers relied heavily on morphological and semantic information rather than on word order under "clean" conditions. However, under noise Germans made significantly less use of grammatical morphology, with a trend toward compensatory reliance on word order. The results indicate that a global reduction in processing capacity can affect some aspects of language more than others and suggest that such factors must be taken into account in trying to understand specific impairment of morphology in aphasia.     

图词间隔时间影响口语词汇产生中语义效应的机制：图词干扰范式研究

口语词汇产生过程中存在语义抑制和语义促进效应, 可能发生在概念准备和词汇选择或者后词汇水平阶段。本研究采用图画-词汇干扰实验任务, 变化图画与词汇出现点之间的时间间隔(stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA), 运用脑电技术考察口语词汇产生中语义效应发生的时间进程。结果显示, 当SOA为0 ms时表现出语义抑制效应, 语义效应发生在词汇选择阶段(344~418 ms); 当SOA为-400 ms时, 语义效应发生在概念准备阶段(0~76 ms)和词汇选择阶段(274~390 ms); 460~594 ms时间窗口内的语义效应可能表明讲话者对语义信息的自我监测。词汇产生中存在语义促进效应和抑制效应的权衡, 影响了行为结果中语义效应的方向, 上述发现支持了口语词汇产生的词汇竞争假说。     

Learning language from the input: why innate constraints can't explain noun compounding

Do the production and interpretation of patterns of plural forms in noun-noun compounds reveal the workings of innate constraints that govern morphological processing? The results of previous studies on compounding have been taken to support a number of important theoretical claims: first, that there are fundamental differences in the way that children and adults learn and process regular and irregular plurals, second, that these differences reflect formal constraints that govern the way the way regular and irregular plurals are processed in language, and third, that these constraints are unlikely to be the product of learning. In a series of seven experiments, we critically assess the evidence that is cited in support of these arguments. The results of our experiments provide little support for the idea that substantively different factors govern the patterns of acquisition, production and interpretation patterns of regular and irregular plural forms in compounds. Once frequency differences between regular and irregular plurals are accounted for, we find no evidence of any qualitative difference in the patterns of interpretation and production of regular and irregular plural nouns in compounds, in either adults or children. Accordingly, we suggest that the pattern of acquisition of both regular and irregular plurals in compounds is consistent with a simple account, in which children learn the conventions that govern plural compounding using evidence that is readily available in the distribution patterns of adult speech.     

Semantic Factors in the Production of Number Agreement

This paper examines the role of semantic factors in the production of subject–verb number agreement. As an ostensibly grammatical process, number agreement provides an interesting case for examining the flow and interaction of semantic and syntactic information through the language-production system. Using a sentence-completion task, agreement errors can be elicited from subjects by presenting them with sentence fragments containing a complex noun-phrase, in which the nonhead noun is plural (e.g., The key to the cabinets...WERE missing.). Previous research has demonstrated that the probability of making an error can be affected by varying the properties of the nouns in the complex noun phrase. By investigating which variables do and do not affect error rates, constraints on the flow of information through the production system can be inferred. In three experiments, we investigated the possible effects of three different semantic manipulations of the nouns in the complex NP: animacy, semantic overlap, and plausibility of modification by the sentence predicate. We found that both animacy and semantic relatedness had reliable effects on error rates, indicating that the mechanism involved in implementing agreement cannot be blind to semantic information. However, the plausibility with which each noun could serve as the subject of the sentence predicate had no effect on error rates. Taken together, these results suggest that while semantic information is visible to the agreement mechanism, there are still constraints on when this information can affect the process. Specifically, it may be the case that only information contained within the complex NP is considered for the purposes of implementing agreement.