Morphology: experiments

Oct 6, 2008

Typical questions asked in morphology and experiments

1. How are certain morphemes related?

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words? (is there a “morpheme” place in the brain)?

3. Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes?

4. How do we learn morphemes in other languages (and which are the hardest and why)?

Typical questions asked in morphology and experiments

1. How are certain morphemes related? (lexical decision tasks)

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words? (is there a “morpheme” place in the brain)? (aphasia)

3. Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes? (brain imaging)

4. How do we learn morphemes in other languages (and which are the hardest and why)? (grammaticality judgment tasks, morpheme order studies)

Lexical Decision Taskcommatubeshaveacidgovernemployjubbingbribeleckomtubestradegovernmentcommandacidic

kepterflupemployerallowingbrothleckomtribeflupperswaprejontallowbrothergave

http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/experiments/lexical.html

1. How are certain morphemes related?

How are these words related?1-nurse/doctor, pillar/column, tree/leaf 2-leave/leaf, burn/urn/ though/through, red/bread 3-teach/taught, speak/speaker, goat/goats, ox/oxen

How are these words related?A-serenity/serene, water/watering, proof/prove, read/rereadB-receive/deceive, transmit/remitC-transmit/transmission, redeem/redemption, fall/fell

electric/electricity, ten/tithe, brother/bretheren, child/children

D-teach/teacher, friend/friendly, walk/walkedE-go/went, good/best, am/is

types of priming

A-real word repetition priming (tubes)

B-non-word repetition priming (leckom)

C-semantic priming (trade/swap; sea/ocean; mouse/cheese)

D-orthographic priming (tribe/bribe, gave/have)

E-morphological priming (govern/government; sing/sang; walk/walking)

F-non-word morphological priming (flup/flupper),

types of morphological form

Transparent: govern/government

Opaque: arch/archer, court/courteous

Form: again/against, broth/brother

Results (Rastle et al., 2004)

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words?

Aphasia: Local trauma to one area of the brain that affects language processing

Lobes of the Brain

1. Frontal Lobe – – personality, planning, emotion, problem solving– motor cortex - movement– Broca’s area – speech production

2. Parietal Lobe – somatosensory perception integration of visual,

auditory & somatospatial information

3. Temporal Lobe – hearing– Inferotemporal Cortex – object recognition– Wernicke’s area – language comprehension

4. Occipital Lobe - vision

How do each one of these relate to language learning?

Wernicke’s aphasiaDamage to the brain in the parietal/temporal

region in the left hemisphere

Karl Wernicke discovered Wernicke’s area in 1873

Examiner: What kind of work have you done?

Patient: We, the kids, all of us, and I, we were working for a long time in

the ... you know ... it's the kind of space, I mean place rear to the spedawn ... Examiner: Excuse me, but I wanted to know what work you have been doing. Patient: If you had said that, we had said that, poomer, near the fortunate, porpunate, tamppoo, all around the

fourth of martz. Oh, I get all confused.

Broca’s aphasia

Damage to left hemisphere, where the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes meet

Paul Broca discovered Broca’s area in 1861

– "Yes ... Monday ... Dad, and Dad ... hospital, and ... Wednesday, Wednesday, nine o'clock and ... Thursday, ten o'clock ... doctors, two, two ... doctors and ... teeth, yah. And a doctor ... girl, and gums, and I."

–   – "Me ... build-ing ... chairs, no, no cab-in-ets. One,

saw ... then, cutting wood ... working ..."

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words?

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words?

3. Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes?

Spatiotemporal Maps of English Verb Inflection (Dhoud et Spatiotemporal Maps of English Verb Inflection (Dhoud et al., 2003)al., 2003)

Looked at what parts of the brain are activated when Looked at what parts of the brain are activated when processing the regular and irregular past tenseprocessing the regular and irregular past tense

3. Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes?

• Brighter areas indicate higher activity levels

• During hearing words, for example, auditory cortex and Wernicke’s area are most active

Lexical decision taskLexical decision task

bigbig

tlasktlask

jumpjump

jumpedjumped

breadbread

butterbutter

runrun

ranran

talkedtalked

talktalk

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

Brown (1973) found a consistent order of acquisition for 14 grammatical morphemes in L1English; rates of

acquisition varied:

1. Present progressive2. In/on3. Plural -s4. Irregular past5. Possessive ‘s

6. Uncontractibe copula7. Articles8. Regular past9. Third person regular10. Third person irregular/Auxilliary be

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

• Repeated with L2 learners (Dulay and Burt (1974)

Point to the mice.Ask: “What are these?”Ask: “What happened to the

cup?”

Bilingual syntax measure

How many birds are there?

Why is the man so fat?

What is the skinny man doing?

Dulay and Burt (1974)

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

Dulay and Burt (1974)

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

*Dulay and Burt (1974)

** Bailey et al. (1974)

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

This order of acquisition didn’t reflect their frequency in parents’ speech. Possible explanations?– Perceptual saliency– Syllabicity– Lack of exceptions