Manipulations of word frequency reveal differences in the processing of morphologically complex and simple words in German

Abstract

We tested current models of morphological processing in reading with data from four visual lexical decision experiments using German compounds and monomorphemic words. Triplets of two semantically transparent noun-noun compounds and one monomorphemic noun were used in Experiments 1a and 1b. Stimuli within a triplet were matched for full-form frequency. The frequency of the compounds' constituents was varied. The compounds of a triplet shared one constituent, while the frequency of the unshared constituent was either high or low, but always higher than full-form frequency. Reactions were faster to compounds with high-frequency constituents than to compounds with low-frequency constituents, while the latter did not differ from the monomorphemic words. This pattern was not influenced by task difficulty, induced by the type of pseudocompounds used. Pseudocompounds were either created by altering letters of an existing compound (easy pseudocompound, Experiment 1a) or by combining two free morphemes into a non-existing, but morphologically legal, compound (difficult pseudocompound, Experiment 1b). In Experiments 2a and 2b, frequency-matched pairs of semantically opaque noun-noun compounds and simple nouns were tested. In Experiment 2a, with easy pseudocompounds (of the same type as in Experiment 1a), a reaction-time advantage for compounds over monomorphemic words was again observed. This advantage disappeared in Experiment 2b, where difficult pseudocompounds were used. Although a dual-route might account for the data, the findings are best understood in terms of decomposition of low-frequency complex words prior to lexical access, followed by processing costs due to the recombination of morphemes for meaning access. These processing costs vary as a function of intrinsic factors such as semantic transparency, or external factors such as the difficulty of the experimental task.

Compound word frequency modifies the effect of character frequency in reading Chinese

“…He found response times to be longer when the second constituent was of low than high frequency. Similar results have been obtained by using the lexical decision task (Bronk et al, 2013; Duñabeitia et al, 2007; Inhoff et al, 2008; M. Wang et al, 2010).…”

Semantic transparency effects in German compounds: A large dataset and multiple-task investigation

“…Differently from English, with its open forms such as tree house, German compounds are consistently written as a single string (Baumhaus). Accordingly, many psycholinguistic studies on semantic transparency are being conducted using German compounds (e.g., Böhl, 2007;Bronk et al, 2013;Dohmes, Zwitserlood, & Bölte, 2004;Gumnior, Bölte, & Zwitserlood, 2006;Koester, Gunter, & Wagner, 2007;Lorenz, Heide, & Burchert, 2014;Lorenz & Zwitserlood, 2014;Sahel, Nottbusch, Grimm, & Weingarten, 2008;Smolka & Libben, 2017).…”

Processing of Norwegian complex verbs: Evidence for early decomposition

“…Whereas Fiorentino and Poeppel (2007) found evidence for the decomposition of compounds by comparing them to monomorphemic words, other studies have looked for evidence of decomposition by directly comparing compounds whose properties were manipulated. Bronk, Zwitserlood, and Bölte (2013) found that German participants in a lexical decision task recognized compound nouns with highfrequency first constituents (e.g., Papierhut Bpaper hat^) more quickly than compound nouns with low-frequency constituents (e.g., Zauberhut Bmagic hat^), even when controlling for the whole-word frequency of the compounds. Other studies that have manipulated the frequency of the first constituent independently of the second have found effects, in languages including English (Andrews 1986;Juhasz, Starr, Inhoff, & Placke 2003;Shoolman & Andrews, 2003;Taft, 1979;Taft & Forster, 1976) and Chinese (Taft, Huang, & Zhu, 1994).…”

“…There are also suggestions that constituent frequency effects are not equally reliable across languages (see, e.g., Dronjic, 2011, for a discussion of Chinese) and that their appearance may depend on external factors such as task difficulty. For example, Bronk et al (2013) found that manipulating pseudoword foils modulated compound-processing effects (see also Andrews, 1986). It would appear, then, that lexical decision studies do not provide conclusive evidence for full or automatic decomposition.…”