Lexical case marking affects the processing of animacy in simple verbs, but not particle verbs: Evidence from event-related potentials

Czypionka, Anna; Eulitz, Carsten

doi:10.5334/gjgl.313

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In the processing of sentences, the animacy of arguments is the central semantic cue for argument role assignment (e.g., MacDonald et al, 1994 ; Trueswell et al, 1994 ; Weckerly and Kutas, 1999 ; Frisch and Schlesewsky, 2001 ; Kuperberg, 2007 ; Branigan et al, 2008 ; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al, 2011 ; Paczynski and Kuperberg, 2011 ; Czypionka, 2014 ), interacting with the processing of number agreement (Bamyacı et al, 2014 ) and case marking (Verhoeven, 2014 ; Czypionka and Eulitz, 2018 ). The prominent role of argument animacy in sentence processing is reflected in its central role in models of sentence processing, where it is associated with the assignment of thematic roles (see, among others, Levelt, 1993 ; Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and Schlesewsky, 2006 , 2009 , 2013 ; Hagoort, 2007 , 2016 ; Kuperberg, 2007 for different approaches to sentence comprehension and production).…”

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confidence: 99%

Wolf-hound vs. sled-dog: neurolinguistic evidence for semantic decomposition in the recognition of German noun-noun compounds

Czypionka,

Kharaman,

Eulitz

2023

Front. Psychol.

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Animacy is an intrinsic semantic property of words referring to living things. A long line of evidence shows that words with animate referents require lower processing costs during word recognition than words with inanimate referents, leading among others to a decreased N400 amplitude in reaction to animate relative to inanimate objects. In the current study, we use this animacy effect to provide evidence for access to the semantic properties of constituents in German noun-noun compounds. While morphological decomposition of noun-noun compounds is well-researched and illustrated by the robust influence of lexical constituent properties like constituent length and frequency, findings for semantic decomposition are less clear in the current literature. By manipulating the animacy of compound modifiers and heads, we are able to manipulate the relative ease of lexical access strictly due to intrinsic semantic properties of the constituents. Our results show additive effects of constituent animacy, with a higher number of animate constituents leading to gradually attenuated N400 amplitudes. We discuss the implications of our findings for current models of complex word recognition, as well as stimulus construction practices in psycho-and neurolinguistic research.

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