Psycholinguistic Investigation of Lexical Access in Hebrew and Maltese

属于亚非语系闪米特语系的语言以其非常不寻常的特征而闻名。其中最著名的是这些语言中构成相关词的元素的不连续性。例如，希伯来语单词gadal“他长大”，gadol“大”，higdila“她扩大”和migdal“塔”都有一个与大小有关的含义，但不可能分离出这些单词共享的连续语音串。相反，这些单词共享三个根辅音“gdl”，它们从不单独出现。一个长期存在的关于这类语言的单词结构的问题涉及希伯来语和其他闪米特语言的母语者在他们的脑海中存储这些单词的可能方式。一种理论假设单位“gdl”被存储，而另一种理论假设实际的单词本身被存储。这个项目将通过研究两种闪米特语言，希伯来语和马耳他语来研究这些理论中哪一种更有可能是正确的。 将为每种语言创建数据库，以便正确记录和计算这些语言中的单词沿着相关属性。 然后进行心理语言学实验，以探索这些语言的使用者如何储存单词。研究项目的数据库组件将对各个领域的其他研究人员非常有用。此外，这项研究将鼓励对这些语言的跨学科研究，并促进马耳他语的可见性，马耳他语是一种记录不足的语言。 这项研究对语言教学有潜在的影响，因为它将导致对希伯来语和马耳他语单词的心理检索的新知识。

Languages belonging to the Semitic sub-family of the Afro-Asiatic language family are known for their very unusual characteristics. Most famous among these is the discontiguous nature of the elements that make up related words in these languages. For instance, the Hebrew words gadal 'he grew', gadol 'big', higdila 'she enlarged' and migdal 'tower' all share a meaning connected to size, yet it is impossible to isolate a contiguous string of sounds shared by these words. Instead, the words share the three root consonants 'gdl', which never occur by themselves in isolation. A long-standing question about word structure in this type of language concerns the possible ways in which native speakers of Hebrew and other Semitic languages store these words in their mind. One theory hypothesizes that the unit 'gdl' is stored, while another theory hypothesizes that the actual words themselves are stored. This project will investigate which of these theories is more likely to be correct by studying two Semitic languages, Hebrew and Maltese. Databases for each language will be created in order to properly document and compute words in these languages, along with their relevant properties. Psycholinguistic experiments will then be carried out in order to probe how speakers of these languages store words.The database component of the research project will be of great use to other researchers in a variety of fields. Additionally, the research will encourage cross-disciplinary research on these languages, and promote the visibility of Maltese, which is an under-documented language. The research has potential consequences for language pedagogy, because it will lead to new knowledge about the mental retrieval of words in Hebrew and Maltese.This project is co-funded by the Office of International Science and Engineering.