Psycholinguistic Investigation of Lexical Access in Hebrew and Maltese

属于亚非语系闪族语系的语言以其非常独特的特点而闻名。其中最著名的是构成这些语言中相关单词的元素的不连续性质。例如，希伯来语单词Gadal‘He Growth’，Gadol‘Big’，Heigila‘She Expanded’和Migdal‘Tower’都有与大小相关的意思，但这些单词不可能分离出连续的一串发音。相反，这两个词共享三个根辅音‘Gdl’，这三个辅音从来不会单独出现。关于这类语言中的单词结构的一个长期存在的问题涉及到希伯来语和其他闪族语言的母语人士在他们的头脑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单词本身被存储。这个项目将通过研究两种闪族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。将建立每种语文的数据库，以便适当地记录和计算这些语文的词语及其相关性质。然后将进行心理语言学实验，以探索说这些语言的人是如何存储单词的。该研究项目的数据库部分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进行跨学科研究，并促进马耳他语的知名度，因为这是一种文献记载较少的语言。这项研究对语言教育学有潜在的影响，因为它将带来关于希伯来语和马尔特语单词心理提取的新知识。该项目由国际科学与工程办公室共同资助。

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.