 |
SPOKEN WORD ACCESS PROCESSES (SWAP)May 29-31, 2000 |
 |
Suffixed Word Lexical Representations in French
Fanny Meunier, William Marslen-Wilson, Mike Ford
MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge
In English and using a cross-modal paradigm, Marslen-Wilson et al. (1994) did not observe a priming effect between two suffixed words derived from the same stem. They did however observe priming between a suffixed word and its stem, a prefixed word and its stem, as well as between two prefixed words derived from the same stem. For these authors, this lack of priming between two suffixed words derived from the same stem reflects competition processes between suffixed forms belonging to the same morphological family when the common stem is accessed. In French, we observed that lexical decision time associated with suffixed words presented auditorily depends on the number of high-frequency suffixed candidates derived from the same stem (Meunier & Segui, 1999). We interpreted this result in the framework proposed by Marslen-Wilson et al. (1994) by postulating inhibitory processes between suffixed words that share a stem.The aim of the present experiment is to see whether or not, in French and using the same design and procedure as Marslen-Wilson et al. (1994), we observe priming effects between two suffixed words derived from the same stem. In French suffixed words can be derived from different types of stem. It seems clear that the type of stem can play a role on the way suffixed words are represented (decomposed or not). Consequently in our experiment we study the priming effect observed between two suffixed words depending on the type of stem they are derived from. We contrasted three types of stem: free stems such as sport found in sportif where the stem is a noun or an adjective; verbal free stems such as attest- found in attestation where the stem can appear only as verbal form, and bound stems such as ocul- found in oculaire where the stem is not a word by itself. Suffixed words were presented visually as targets in two auditory priming conditions: preceded either by another suffixed word derived from the same stem or by a control prime. We also had two control conditions: a suffixed word-stem condition and a formal condition where primes and targets were formally related but not semantically or morphologically related.We observed the classical suffixed word-stem priming effect. And while no formal effect was observed, the results showed a morphological priming effect for the three suffixed-suffixed word conditions: suffixed word primes significantly facilitated lexical decision responses for suffixed words whatever type of stem they were derived from. No interaction was found, which means that the facilitatory effect did not differ with the type of the stem. These results showed that, in French, suffixed words derived from the same stem prime each other and that this morphological effect is not modify by the type of stem these words are derived from. The results obtained in French contrast with those observed in English. This highlights the major role of the structure of languages on the way words are lexically accessed and represented as well as the importance of conducting experiments in different languages.Bibliographic reference. Meunier, Fanny / Marslen-Wilson, William D. / Ford, Mike (2000): "Suffixed Word Lexical Representations in French", In SWAP-2000, 31-34.