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

许多文字处理的理论假设激活的组成表征，但很少有人知道这些表征是如何整合的。通过探讨这一过程中涉及的因素，并分别确定语素结构和关系结构所起的作用，本项目将大大有助于我们理解多语素词是如何理解和产生的。最终，这个项目将提供更深入的了解词汇生产力和语义组合，这是人类语言和认知系统的基石。 拟议的研究有三个流。第一个是考察语言系统是否在有语素的时候就试图构建一个语素结构，而不管它是否合适。Schreuder和Baayen（1995）发现，一个单语素词的反应延迟和主观频率等级受到该词的形态相关形式的数量的影响，这表明一个语素激活了形态相关的词。然而，目前尚不完全清楚的是，当词素非生产性使用时是否会出现类似的效果。例如，单词carpet没有语素结构，但包含两个语素（car和pet）。我将进行一系列的实验，以测试这些语素的属性（如词频和位置族大小）是否会影响词汇判断的易加工性。语义上不透明和透明的化合物将作为比较条件。 第二个流测试关系信息是否仅在语素结构建立之后才被使用。我将使用可能的关系任务（Gagné & Spalding，出版中）为每个项目创建可能的关系解释的分布。这些分布将被用来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在一小部分关系上的程度。关系熵度量特定项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影响处理语义透明和不透明化合物的容易程度，但方式不同（Spalding & Gagné，出版中）。我将探索这种差异背后的原因，并将研究这些变量是否影响伪化合物的加工（例如，'kitten'）。如果所有包含嵌入语素的项目都试图进行意义构建，那么伪复合词的加工将受到关系信息的影响。 第三个流使用打字任务来检查在合成词的产生过程中关系信息所扮演的角色（如果有的话）。与语素可能在语素复杂词的产生过程中充当规划单元的说法一致（Roelofs & Baayen 2002），Libben（2011）发现语素边界的打字时间增加。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会影响生产。我将开始通过检查是否多样性和关系熵不同地影响语义透明和不透明的化合物的打字时间。我还将研究是否支持一个新的意义的上下文（例如，footrace =一英尺长的比赛）增加了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。

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.