Are CORNER and BROTHER morphologically complex? Not in the long term

Abstract

Previous studies haves shown that under masked priming conditions, CORNER primes CORN as strongly as TEACHER primes TEACH and more strongly than BROTHEL primes BROTH. This result has been taken as evidence of a purely structural level of representation at which words are decomposed into morphological constituents in a manner that is independent of semantics. The research reported here investigated the influence of semantic transparency on long-term morphological priming. Two experiments demonstrated that while lexical decisions were facilitated by semantically transparent primes like TEACHER, semantically opaque words like CORNER had no effect. Although differences in the nonword foils used in each experiment gave rise to somewhat different patterns of results, this difference in the effects of transparent and opaque primes was found in both experiments. The implications of this finding for accounts of morphological effects on visual word identification are discussed.

Binding radicals in Chinese character recognition: Evidence from repetition blindness

“…The nature of morphemic processing is similar to Chinese radicals because: (1) both HF and LF words are decomposed into morphemes (McCormick, Brysbaert, & Rastle, 2009); (2) the representation of a morpheme is position-sensitive (Crepaldi, Rastle, & Davis, 2010), (3) nevertheless, there is still a debate regarding whether morphemes at an early processing stage provide semantic information to the whole word (Dunabeitia, Perea, & Carreiras, 2008;Feldman, O'Conner, & Moscoso del Prado Martín, 2009) or not Marslen-Wilson et al, 2008;Rueckl & Aicher, 2008). Therefore, to date, it is suggested that the morphological processing before lexical access is based on orthographic analysis (called ''morpho-orthographic" decomposition), but not necessarily on semantic analysis (called ''morpho-semantic" decomposition).…”

Meaning is in the beholder’s eye: Morpho-semantic effects in masked priming

“…All studies adopting paradigms that tap into late processing stages-for example, long stimulus-onset asynchrony or cross-modal priming-indicate that semantics plays a crucial role in morphological decomposition, as evidenced by processing facilitation only for genuinely related prime-target pairs (punishment-PUNISH) as opposed to pseudo-related pairs (inventory-INVENT) (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, Waksler, & Older, 1994;Rastle, Davis, Marslen-Wilson, & Tyler, 2000;Rueckl & Aicher, 2008). These results indicate a level of morphological analysis that is sensitive to semantic transparency.…”

Orthographic and semantic opacity in masked and delayed priming: Evidence from Greek

“…In contrast, when the interval between prime and target is long and filled with unrelated words (as in delayed priming paradigms), morphological priming effects can be dissociated from semantic priming and yet are still conditioned by semantic transparency. In a delayed priming study, Rueckl and Aicher (2008) reported that semantically transparent primes facilitated responses to a larger extent than semantically opaque primes, consistent with results from German (though see Bentin & Feldman, 1990;Bozic, Marslen-Wilson, Stamatakis, Davis, & Tyler, 2007;Drews & Zwitserlood, 1995). The dissimilarity of masked and delayed priming in the effects of semantic transparency led to the proposal of two processing stages in visual word recognition: an early morpho-orthographic stage, possibly reflected in masked priming, and a later occurring morpho-semantic stage, reflected in delayed priming effects .…”

“…This morpho-semantic perspective on decomposition has gained support from different tasks such as crossmodal priming (Gonnerman, Seidenberg, & Andersen, 2007;Longtin, Segui, & Halle, 2003;Marslen-Wilson et al, 1994), visual priming with visible primes (Rastle, Davis, Tyler, & Marslen-Wilson, 2000), and delayed priming (Drews & Zwitserlood, 1995;Marslen-Wilson & Zhou, 1999;Rueckl & Aicher, 2008). For example, Marslen-Wilson et al (1994) reported robust cross-modal priming effects for stem-target pairs that were morphologically and semantically related (e.g., hunter/hunt) but not for pairs that were not semantically related (department/depart) (henceforth referred to as ''semantically opaque'').…”

“…All words are morphologically complex (stems require an inflectional and/or a derivational suffix to surface as words) and there are consequently no legal word endings (like -el) that are not an inflectional or derivational affix. We also chose not to include purely semantically related primeÁtarget pairs as semantic priming has not been reported with either the delayed (e.g., Feldman, 2000;Raveh & Rueckl, 2000;Rueckl & Aicher, 2008) or the masked priming procedures (Frost, Forster, & Deutsch, 1997; see also Marslen-Wilson, Bozic, & Randall, 2008;Perea & Gotor, 1997;Rastle et al, 2000). It has been suggested that when the processing of the prime (or perhaps prime visibility) is restricted, as in masked priming paradigms, or when there are intervening items between prime and target (average lag 10 items), effects of semantic relatedness are generally absent, whereas morphological effects are preserved (Feldman, 2003).…”