Semantically Transparent and Opaque Compounds in German Noun-Phrase Production: Evidence for Morphemes in Speaking

Abstract

This study examines the lexical representation and processing of noun-noun compounds and their grammatical gender during speech production in German, a language that codes for grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter). Using a picture-word interference paradigm, participants produced determiner-compound noun phrases in response to pictures, while ignoring written distractor words. Compound targets were either semantically transparent (e.g., birdhouse) or opaque (e.g., hotdog), and their constituent nouns either had the same or a different gender (internal gender match). Effects of gender-congruent but otherwise unrelated distractor nouns, and of two morphologically related distractors corresponding to the first or second constituent were assessed relative to a completely unrelated, gender-incongruent distractor baseline. Both constituent distractors strongly facilitated compound naming, and these effects were independent of the targets' semantic transparency. This supports retrieval of constituent morphemes for semantically transparent and opaque compounds during speech production. Furthermore, gender congruency between compounds and distractors did not speed up naming in general, but interacted with gender match of the compounds' constituent nouns, and their semantic transparency. A significant gender-congruency effect was obtained with semantically transparent compounds, consisting of two constituent nouns of the same gender, only. In principle, this pattern is compatible with a multiple lemma representation account for semantically transparent, but not for opaque compounds. The data also fit with a more parsimonious, holistic representation for all compounds at the lemma level, when differences in co-activation patterns for semantically transparent and opaque compounds are considered.

Grammatical-gender effects in noun–noun compound production: Evidence from German

“…The absence of corresponding effects with familiar compounds, then, is in line with the assumption of a single-lemma representation view and does not provide support for the multiple-lemma representation view. Note, however, that our findings do not question the notion of morpheme-based storage of compounds at the word-form level (e.g., Lorenz & Zwitserlood, 2016; Lüttmann et al, 2011; Roelofs, 1996a, 1996b).…”

“…Naming latencies were faster in the related condition. In a subsequent study, similar effects were obtained when single constituents of compound target words were presented as distractors (e.g., bag-handbag, Lorenz & Zwitserlood, 2016). These effects cannot be attributed to semantic overlap because similar-sized effects were obtained for semantically transparent and opaque targets; for the latter, there is no overlap in meaning between compound and constituent (e.g., Zahn [tooth] -Löwenzahn ["lion tooth" = dandelion], for related evidence from studies with compound distractors and simple-noun targets, see Dohmes, Zwitserlood, & Bölte, 2004;Koester & Schiller, 2008;Lensink, Verdonschot, & Schiller, 2015).…”

“…Semantic interference was only obtained for the first (whole-word related) contrast, providing no evidence in favor of constituent-based lemma representations. In another picture–word interference study, Lorenz and Zwitserlood (2016) tackled this issue in a different way, namely, by examining gender-congruency effects with noun–noun compounds as targets. In this task, naming a picture in a format that is overtly marked for gender (e.g., gender-marked determiner and noun) is usually faster when the gender of the distractor noun is congruent with the gender of the target noun than when it is not (e.g., La Heij, Mak, Sander, & Willeboordse, 1998; Schiller & Caramazza, 2003; Schriefers, 1993; Schriefers & Teruel, 2000).…”

“…We used a picture naming task with noun–noun compounds as targets that were primed by gender-marked determiners. Arguably, this task is more straightforward and requires fewer assumptions than the picture–word interference task testing for gender-congruency effects that was used previously in this context (Lorenz & Zwitserlood, 2016, see above). In the picture–word interference task, one needs to make specific assumptions to which extent the bare noun distractor first activates its gender information which then may interact with the gender information activated through the picture name (see Schriefers, Jescheniak, & Hantsch, 2002).…”

Age-related effects in compound production: Evidence from a double-object picture naming task

“…Importantly, this was more pronounced in older speakers, pointing to deficient or delayed morpho-phonological encoding in the elderly. In models of speech production, interference effects of distractors from the same semantic category as the target (e.g., tulip → sunflower ) are taken to reflect lexical competition at the so-called “lemma” level, whereas morphological facilitation reflects activation of morpheme representations at the word-form level (Badecker, 2001; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999 see also Koester & Schiller, 2008; Lensink, Verdonschot, & Schiller, 2014; Lorenz & Zwitserlood, 2016; Lüttmann, Bölte, Böhl, & Zwitserlood, 2011 but see Janssen, Bi, & Caramazza, 2008; Janssen, Pajitas, & Caramazza, 2014). While age-related effects were restricted to the morphological distractor conditions, no ageing effects were obtained with semantic distractors.…”