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| Research article summary (published 4 May 2003): |
Morphological decomposition involving non-productive morphemes: ERP evidence.
Full Abstract
It is generally believed that readers decompose a complex word into its constituent morphemes only when those morphemes participate productively in word formation. Here we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to words (e.g. muffler, receive), non-words containing no morphemes (e.g. flermuf), and non-words containing a prefix and a non-productive bound stem (e.g. in-ceive). Prior work has shown that pronounceable non-words elicit larger-amplitude N400 components than words. If readers treat non-words containing non-productive morphemes as unanalyzed wholes, then these non-words should elicit larger N400 s than matched words. We report here, however, that bound-stem non-words elicit a brain response highly similar to that elicited by real words. This finding suggests that morphological decomposition and representation extend to non-productive morphemes.
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Author information
Author/s: McKinnon, Richard (R); Allen, Mark (M); Osterhout, Lee (L);
Affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Grants: R01 DC01947 (Agency:United States NIDCD)
Journal and publication information
Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.
Journal: Neuroreport (Neuroreport), published in England. (Language: eng)
Reference: 2003-May; vol 14 (issue 6) : pp 883-6
Dates: Created 2003/07/14; Completed 2003/08/22; Revised 2007/11/14;
PMID: 12858053, 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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