The influence of age of acquisition, root frequency, and context availability in processing nouns and verbs.

Full Abstract

In the Italian language there is a higher number of inflectional suffixes in verbs than in nouns, and this might imply that verbs are more likely to undergo a morphological analysis in terms of root and suffix as compared to nouns (Traficante & Burani, unpublished observations). Moreover, verbs tend to be more abstract than nouns, and this aspect might make verb processing more difficult. Finally, the developmental gap in the production of nouns and verbs suggests that age of acquisition might affect noun and verbs differently. Nouns and verbs were presented in a lexical decision and in a naming task. The morphological variable root frequency in addition to word frequency, length and word age of acquisition, and the semantic variables concreteness and context availability (Schwanenflugel, Harnishfeger, & Stowe, 1988) were used as predictors in multiple-regression analyses in which lexical decision and naming latencies were the dependent variables. The results showed that age of acquisition, context availability, and root frequency are all important in predicting both lexical decision and naming latencies for nouns and verbs, but age of acquisition and root frequency are better predictors of the differences in processing Italian nouns and verbs.Copyright 2001 Elsevier Science (USA).

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Author information

Author/s: Colombo, Lucia (L); Burani, Cristina (C);

Affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia Generale University of Padua, Padua, Italy. lucia.colombo(-atsign-)unipd.it

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Brain and language (Brain Lang), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: -2002 Apr-Jun; vol 81 (issue 1-3) : pp 398-411

Dates: Created 2002/06/25; Completed 2002/07/25; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12081408, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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