Transfert de la conscience morphologique de l’arabe langue première au français langue seconde au cours des trois premières années d’apprentissage

There is a great deal of evidence to support the role of morphological awareness in reading development. However, towards second language acquisition, transfer of morphological awareness from first to second language (L1 to L2) is still discussed. The underlying question concerns the extent to which morphological awareness is a specific or universal process, and its dependence of linguistic features. The aim of this study is to examine cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic L1 to French L2 (morphological awareness and word reading) at different level of learning French L2 (F_L2). 106 Tunisian children, whose first language is Arabic, in 1st (n = 29; mean age; 8; 10 years), 2nd (n = 33; mean age; 9; 9 years) or 3rd year (n = 44; mean age; 10; 10 years) of learning F_L2 participated to this study. Their morphological awareness (inflectional or derivational oddity detection tasks) and their performance in word reading (one minute test) were assessed in standard Arabic and French, as well as their vocabulary knowledge in French. A series of fixed-order hierarchical regression analysis was performed on derivational awareness performances, inflectional awareness performances and word reading performances in F_L2, controlling for effects of other important variables (e.g. French vocabulary, French morphological awareness with word reading scores as outcome variable and French inflectional or derivational awareness with French inflectional or derivational awareness scores as outcome variable respectively, Arabic word reading, etc.). Results show significant contributions of L1 morpho-derivational awareness on F_L2 morpho-derivational awareness in 2nd year (12%), and of L1 morphological awareness on reading words F_L2 in 3^rd year (5%). These results confirm the cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness, particularly derivational, from L1 to L2 among alphabetic — but orthographically and morphologically distances — languages. They also suggest that such a transfer could be relatively limited. It could appear during learning process after achieving a threshold in F_L2 and before specific L2 skills take place. Thus, beyond the morphological opacity of Arabic (nonlinear morphology) and linguistic distance between Arabic and French, the morphological transfer could appear on rich and important morphological dimension in L1 and suggest dealing with the nature of cross-linguistic abilities in depth.     

传统本体论哲学的终结和马克思哲学变革的实质

本文从讨论Ontology的译名开始,主张严格区分作为一门哲学分支学科的“存在论”,和作为一种特定哲学理论形态的“本体论”两个概念;通过对传统西方哲学所代表和象征的哲学理念的把握,揭示了其基本特征和历史命运;进而从马克思哲学与传统西方哲学的否定性关系视角,阐明了马克思哲学变革的实质和意义。作者认为,马克思哲学在哲学史上最具深远意义的革命变革,就在于它通过对传统本体论哲学的批判和超越,开创了哲学发展的新方向．奠定了哲学发展新形态的基础。     

Stem Complexity and Inflectional Encoding in Language Production

Three experiments are reported that examined whether stem complexity plays a role in inflecting polymorphemic words in language production. Experiment 1 showed that preparation effects for words with polymorphemic stems are larger when they are produced among words with constant inflectional structures compared to words with variable inflectional structures and simple stems. This replicates earlier findings for words with monomorphemic stems (Janssen et al., 2002). Experiments 2 and 3 showed that when inflectional structure is held constant, the preparation effects are equally large with simple and compound stems, and with compound and complex adjectival stems. These results indicate that inflectional encoding is blind to the complexity of the stem, which suggests that specific inflectional rather than generic morphological frames guide the generation of inflected forms in speaking words.     

Sublexical and syntactic processing during reading: evidence from eye movements of typically developing and dyslexic readers*

Skilled, typically developing readers and children with dyslexia read correct sentences and sentences that contained verb errors that were pseudo-homophones, morphological over-regularisations or syntactic errors. All errors increased looking time but the nature of the error and participant group influenced the time course of the effects. The pseudo-homophone effect was significant in all eye-movement measures for adults (N?=?26), intermediate (N?=?37) and novice typically developing readers (N?=?38). This effect was larger for intermediate readers than other groups in total duration. In contrast, morphological over-regularisations increased gaze and total duration (but not first fixation) for intermediate and novice readers, and only total duration for adult readers. Syntactic errors only increased total duration. Children with dyslexia (N?=?19) demonstrated smaller effects of pseudo-homophones and over-regularisations than controls, but their processing of syntactic errors was similar. We conclude that dyslexic children's difficulties with reading are linked to overreliance on phonological decoding and underspecified morphological processing, which impacts on word level reading. We highlight that the findings fit well within the grain-size model of word reading [Grainger, J., &; Ziegler, J. C. (2011). A dual-route approach to orthographic processing. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 54. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00054].     

Brain potentials for derivational morphology: an ERP study of deadjectival nominalizations in Spanish

This study investigates brain potentials to derived word forms in Spanish. Two experiments were performed on derived nominals that differ in terms of their productivity and semantic properties but are otherwise similar, an acceptability judgment task and a reading experiment using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in which correctly and incorrectly formed derived words were presented in sentence contexts. The first experiment indicated productivity differences between the different nominalization processes in Spanish. The second experiment yielded a pattern of ERP responses that differed from both the familiar lexical-semantic and grammatical ERP effects. Violations of derivational morphology elicited an increased N400 component plus a late positivity (P600), unlike gender-agreement violations, which produced the biphasic LAN/P600 ERP pattern known from previous studies of morpho-syntactic violations. We conclude that the recognition of derived word forms engages both word-level (lexical-semantic) and decompositional (morpheme-based) processes.     

Word for word: Multiple lexical access in speech production

We report an experiment in which we test the possible influence of the tense of the verb and explicit negatives with indicative conditionals. We tested the effects of systematically negating the constituents of four fundamental inferences based on conditionals in three different tenses (present tense, past tense, future tense): Modus Ponens (i.e., inferences of the form: if p then q; p; therefore q), Modus Tollens (if p then q; not-q; therefore not-p), Affirmation of the Consequent (if p then q; q; therefore p), and Denial of the Antecedent (if p then q; not-p; therefore not-q). The latter two inferences are invalid for true conditionals, but are valid for bi-conditionals (if, and only if, p then q). The participants drew their own conclusions from premises about letters and numbers on cards. We discuss the results in relation to an affirmation premise bias, a negative conclusion bias, and a double negation effect. We outline the importance of our findings for theories about conditional and counterfactual thinking.     

Morphological units in the Arabic mental lexicon: evidence from an individual with deep dyslexia

An ongoing debate in Arabic morphology concerns the nature of the smallest unit governing lexical organization and representation in this language. A standard model maintains that Arabic words are typically analyzable into a three-consonantal root morpheme carrying the core meaning of words and a prosodic template responsible mostly for grammatical information. This view has been largely supported by research in both theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. An alternative theory holds that the meaning of words in Arabic is, rather, encoded in the 'etymon' comprising two unordered consonants of the root only. Results from a recent priming experiment have shown that the etymon induces strong morphological priming effects, supporting its morphological/lexical status. In this paper we present data from a patient with deep dyslexia questioning the role of the etymon as a psychologically real representational unit in Arabic and arguing, instead, for the central role of the root in both morphological and lexical representation in this language.     

Errors of Omission in English-Speaking Children's Production of Plurals and the Past Tense: The Effects of Frequency, Phonology, and Competition

How do English‐speaking children inflect nouns for plurality and verbs for the past tense? We assess theoretical answers to this question by considering errors of omission, which occur when children produce a stem in place of its inflected counterpart (e.g., saying “dress” to refer to 5 dresses). A total of 307 children (aged 3;11–9;9) participated in 3 inflection studies. In Study 1, we show that errors of omission occur until the age of 7 and are more likely with both sibilant regular nouns (e.g., dress) and irregular nouns (e.g., man) than regular nouns (e.g., dog). Sibilant nouns are more likely to be inflected if they are high frequency. In Studies 2 and 3, we show that similar effects apply to the inflection of verbs and that there is an advantage for “regular‐like” irregulars whose inflected form, but not stem form, ends in d/t. The results imply that (a) stems and inflected forms compete for production and (b) children generalize both product‐oriented and source‐oriented schemas when learning about inflectional morphology.     

Counterintuitive cross-linguistic differences: More morphological computation in English than in Finnish

This study investigates the role of derivational morphology in lexical processing in two typologically quite different languages: Finnish and English. While Finnish is a language with an extremely rich morphology, English morphology is relatively poor. Consequently, the role of morphology in storing and processing words would be expected to be greater in Finnish than in English. With a series of visual lexical decision experiments in both languages, we find that the opposite is the case for derivational morphology: for English, parsing of morphological constituents is often required, whereas for Finnish, full-form storage and access seems to be the rule. We try to explain this counterintuitive finding by making an appeal to the lexical-statistical properties of both languages.     

Gyral morphology in the posterior Sylvian region in families affected by developmental language disorder

This study describes the family aggregation of gyral morphology in the posterior perisylvian region in families that contain one or more children with a developmental language disorder. The probands in these families were 8 male and 2 female children referred through therapy programs and schools for children with language and reading problems. Family members included both biological parents (10 m, 10 f) and all available siblings (6 m, 4 f). Gyral morphology in the members of these families was compared with control subjects (10 m, 10 f) who were without a personal or family history of developmental language disorders. Gyral morphology was evaluated using T1-weighted sagittal scans from a GE Signa 1.5T magnet, 5 mm consecutive slices through the full brain volume. A less common type of Sylvian fissure morphology was more frequently found in the hemispheres of language-disordered subjects and their first-degree relatives than in control subjects. In addition, the pattern of Sylvian fissure morphology across generations within the families suggests that this feature might be inherited from either parent. The elevated rate of extra gyri in the posterior perisylvian region in families affected by language disorder links an anomaly within a language-related brain region with familial risk for this disorder.