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The role of morpho-phonological complexity in word recognition: an ERP study of German nouns
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Poster A36 in Poster Session A, Tuesday, October 24, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Anna Gupta1, Charles Redmon2,4, Frans Plank1,3, Aditi Lahiri2,3, Carsten Eulitz1; 1University of Konstanz, 2University of Oxford, 3Somerville College, 4University of Essex
Previous research has shown that complex words are decomposed into their morphological constituents during word recognition. Our goal was to study how derivational depth (i.e. the number of steps in the formation of complex words) with or without accompanying phonological processes (e.g., umlauting or vowel fronting) influenced the recognition of German words. We investigated complex nouns with the nominalizing suffix –ung. The experimental conditions were as follows: (1) one-step non-umlauted, where nouns were derived from their verbal bases in one step, e.g., Ladung (N, “load”) < laden (V, “to load”); (2) two-step non-umlauted, where verbs were derived from adjectival or noun bases before being nominalized, e.g., Planung (N, “planning”) < planen (V, “to plan”) < Plan (N, “plan”); (3) two-step umlauted, where verbs got umlaut in the first derivational step, e.g., Schwächung (N, “weakening”) < schwächen (V, “to weaken”) < schwach (A, “weak”). During EEG recordings participants performed a lexical decision task. We hypothesized that morphological complexity operationalized in the number of derivational steps as well as phonological umlaut will impose processing costs reflected in enhanced N400 amplitudes. So far we have analyzed data from 12 participants but we will present data from 30 participants at the conference. The preliminary results suggest that the potential effect of derivational depth can be seen in the N400 latency range, whereas, the effect of umlauting emerges later in the LPC latency range. To be more specific, there was greater negativity between 350 – 450 ms at the central-parietal electrode positions for both two-step conditions (2 and 3) relative to the one-step condition (1) which was interpreted as the depth effect. With respect to umlaut, the initial analysis shows that its effect occurred after 500 ms. For now, we can tentatively conclude that both derivational depth and the accompanying process of umlauting affected the recognition of German complex nouns.
Topic Areas: Morphology, Speech Perception