Morphemes, Pseudo-morphemes, and Relational Structure: Effects on production and comprehension of English words

语素、伪语素和关系结构：对英语单词产生和理解的影响

• 批准号: RGPIN-2014-05100
• 负责人: Gagne, Christina
• 金额: $ 2.19万
• 依托单位: University of Alberta
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2014-01-01 至 2015-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=566950
• 关键词: Morphemes; Pseudo; morphemes; Relational; Structure

Many theories of word processing assume the activation of constituent representations, but little is known about how these representations are integrated. By exploring factors that are involved in this process, and by separately identifying the role played by morphemic structure and relational structure, this project will greatly contribute to our understanding of how multi-morphemic words are comprehended and produced. Ultimately, this project will provide deeper insight into lexical productivity and semantic compositionality, which are the cornerstones of the human language and cognitive system. The proposed research has three streams. The first examines whether the language system attempts to construct a morphemic structure whenever morphemes are available, regardless of whether it is appropriate. Schreuder and Baayen (1995) found that response latencies and subjective frequency ratings of a monomorphemic word are influenced by the number of morphologically related forms for that word, which suggests that a morpheme actives morphologically related words. However, what is not yet fully known is whether similar effects occur when a morpheme is used non-productively. To illustrate, the word ‘carpet’ has no morphemic structure yet contains two morphemes (‘car’ and ‘pet’). I will conduct a series of experiments that will test whether properties of these morphemes (such as word frequency and positional family size) affect ease of processing as measured by lexical decision latencies. Semantically opaque and transparent compounds will serve as comparison conditions. The second stream tests whether relational information is used only after a morphemic structure has been established. I will use the possible relations task (Gagné & Spalding, in press) to create a distribution of possible relational interpretations for each item. The distributions will be used to derive two measures that reflect relational information: diversity and relational entropy. Diversity indicates the extent to which the possible interpretations are concentrated on a small set of relations. Relational entropy measures the extent to which the relational distribution for a specific item differs from the total relational distribution. Recent evidence shows that diversity and relative relational entropy affect the ease of processing both semantically transparent and opaque compounds, but in different ways (Spalding & Gagné, in press). I will explore the reasons underlying this difference and will also examine whether these variables influence the processing of pseudocompounds (e.g., ‘kitten’). If meaning construction is attempted for all items that contain embedded morphemes, then the processing of pseudocompounds will be affected by relational information. The third stream uses a typing task to examine the role (if any) played by relational information during the production of compound words. Consistent with the claim that morphemes might act as planning units during the production of morphemically complex words (Roelofs & Baayen 2002), Libben (2011) found elevated typing times at the morpheme boundary. My goal is to identify factors that affect this elevation and, in particular, to test whether relational information influences production. I will begin by examining whether diversity and relational entropy differentially affect typing times for semantically transparent and opaque compounds. I will also examine whether a context that supports a novel meaning (e.g., footrace = race that is one foot long) increases the size of the boundary delay and whether context interacts with diversity and relational entropy.

许多文字处理理论都假设成分表征是激活的，但对于这些表征是如何整合的却知之甚少。通过探索这一过程中涉及的因素，并分别识别语素结构和关系结构所扮演的角色，该项目将极大地有助于我们理解多语素词是如何理解和产生的。最终，该项目将提供对词汇生产力和语义组合性的更深入的了解，这是人类语言和认知系统的基石。 拟议的研究分为三个方向。第一个检查语言系统是否在语素可用时尝试构建语素结构，无论它是否合适。 Schreuder 和 Baayen (1995) 发现单词素词的反应潜伏期和主观频率评级受到该词的形态相关形式数量的影响，这表明词素激活形态相关的词。然而，目前尚不完全清楚的是，当语素被非生产性地使用时是否会出现类似的效果。为了说明这一点，“地毯”一词没有语素结构，但包含两个语素（“汽车”和“宠物”）。我将进行一系列实验，测试这些语素的属性（例如词频和位置族大小）是否会影响通过词汇决策延迟来衡量的处理难易程度。语义不透明和透明的化合物将作为比较条件。 第二个流测试是否仅在建立语素结构后才使用关系信息。我将使用可能的关系任务（Gagné & Spalding，正在出版）为每个项目创建可能的关系解释的分布。这些分布将用于导出反映关系信息的两个度量：多样性和关系熵。多样性表明可能的解释集中于一小组关系的程度。关系熵衡量特定项目的关系分布与总关系分布的差异程度。最近的证据表明，多样性和相对关系熵会影响语义透明和不透明复合词的处理难易程度，但影响方式不同（Spalding & Gagné，出版中）。我将探讨这种差异背后的原因，并将检查这些变量是否影响伪化合物（例如“小猫”）的处理。如果尝试对所有包含嵌入语素的项目进行意义构建，那么伪复合词的处理将受到关系信息的影响。 第三个流使用打字任务来检查关系信息在复合词生成过程中所扮演的角色（如果有）。与语素在语素复杂单词的产生过程中可能充当规划单元的说法一致（Roelofs & Baayen 2002），Libben（2011）发现语素边界处的打字时间增加。我的目标是确定影响这种提升的因素，特别是测试关系信息是否影响生产。我将首先检查多样性和关系熵是否对语义透明和不透明复合词的打字时间产生不同的影响。我还将研究支持新含义的上下文（例如，赛跑 = 一英尺长的比赛）是否会增加边界延迟的大小，以及上下文是否与多样性和关系熵相互作用。