EAPSI: Wugs, Words, and Memory: An Experimental Investigation into the Mental Representation of Sino-Japanese Roots

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A single word or morpheme - the building block of linguistic meaning - may be realized differently, depending on its linguistic environment. This variability begs the question: how are words represented in memory? A minimal theory holds that only the minimum amount of information necessary to identify a word is included in a representation, to conserve space in memory. Any variation in a word's utterance is understood as a result of independent cognitive mechanisms. A maximal theory holds that all variants of a given word are stored, to maximize contextual sensitivity. While the two theories are substantively different, they are difficult to tease apart: minimal representation with cognitive processes accounts for variation as well as maximal representation. Under the direction of Prof. Shigeto Kawahara at Keio University, in Tokyo, Japan, the researcher will experimentally investigate an empirical domain where the theories make distinct predictions. Sino-Japanese roots (root words from Chinese) appear in pairs, or "compounds". Roots have different realizations in different compounds. For instance, the root meaning {DIFFERENT} is realized as [bet]+tou and [betu]+noo. Under the minimal theory, the representation of {DIFFERENT} would be /bet/. The /u/ would be derived by cognitive process. Under the maximal theory though, the representation would be /betu/. Both theories account for the variation in common compounds. However, the theories make different predictions about what speakers would produce in unfamiliar contexts. Thus, the researcher will use wug-tests to probe the representation of Sino-Japanese roots. In a wug-test, speakers are presented with a novel object and a novel name for that object (e.g. "wug"). A speaker is then shown the wug in different situations, and asked how they would describe the situation in such a way as to manipulate linguistic context. The research will present speakers with novel Sino-Japanese root compounds, and see how they describe the situation. In this way, we can test if speakers' behavior reflects the representation of Sino-Japanese roots as minimal or maximal.This award, under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program, supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.