Abstract
We examined the contribution of semantics to morphological facilitation in the visual lexical decision task at two stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) with Serbian materials. Primes appeared in Roman or Cyrillic characters. Targets always were printed in Roman. When primes were presented at an SOA of 250 msec, decision latencies to verbal targets (e.g.,volim) showed greatest facilitation after inflectionally (e.g.,vole) related primes, significantly less after semantically transparent derived primes (e.g., zavole), and less again after semantically opaque derived primes (e.g., prevole). Latencies after semantically transparent and opaque derived target words did not differ at an SOA of 48 msec. Both were slower than after inflectionally related primes. Stated generally, effects of semantic transparency among derivationally related verb forms were evident at long SOAs, but not at short ones. Under alphabetalternating conditions, magnitudes of facilitation were greater overall, but the pattern was similar. The outcome suggests that restricted processing time for the prime limits the contribution of semantics to morphological processing and calls into question accounts that posit a task-invariant semantic criterion for morphological decomposition within the lexicon.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Bentin, S., &Feldman, L. B. (1990). The contribution of morphological and semantic relatedness to repetition priming at short and long lags: Evidence from Hebrew.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology,42A, 693–711.
Bentin, S., &Frost, R. (1995). Morphological factors in visual word identification in Hebrew. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.),Morphological aspects of language processing. (pp. 271–292). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Butterworth, B. (1983). Lexical representation. In B. Butterworth (Ed.),Language production (Vol. 2, pp. 257–294). San Diego: Academic Press.
Bybee, J. H. (1985).Morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., &Forster, K. (1998). Verbs and nouns are organized and accessed differently in the mental lexicon: Evidence from Hebrew.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,24, 1238–1255.
Drews, E., &Zwitserlood, P. (1995). Morphological and orthographic similarity in visual word recognition.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,21, 1098–1116.
Feldman, L. B. (1992). Morphological relationships revealed through the repetition priming task. In M. Noonan, P. Downing, & S. Lima (Eds.),Linguistics and literacy (pp. 239–254). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Feldman, L. B. (2001). Are morphological effects distinguishable from the effects of shared meaning and shared form?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,26, 1431–1444.
Feldman, L. B., &Barac-Cikoja, D. (1996). Serbo-Croatian: A biscriptal language. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Eds.),The world's writing systems (pp. 769–772). New York: Oxford University Press.
Feldman, L. B., &Moskovljević, J. (1987). Repetition priming is not purely episodic in origin.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,13, 573–581.
Feldman, L. B., & Pastizzo, M. J. (2002).Graded semantic compositionality alters morphological facilitation. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Feldman, L. B., & Raveh, M. (in press). Semantic aspects of morphological processing. In J. Shimron (Ed.),Language processing and language acquisition in languages with root-based morphology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Feldman, L. B., &Soltano, E. G. (1999). Morphological priming: The role of prime duration, semantic transparency and affix position.Brain & Language,60, 33–39.
Feldman, L. B., Soltano, E. G., Pastizzo, M., & Francis, S. (2001).When does semantic transparency influence morphological processing? Manuscript submitted for publication.
Frost, R., Deutsch, A., Gilboa, O., Tannenbaum, M., &Marslen-Wilson, W. (2000). Morphological priming: Dissociation of phonological, semantic, and morphological factors.Memory & Cognition,28, 1277–1288.
Frost, R., Forster, K., &Deutsch, A. (1997). What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,23, 829–856.
Lorch, R. (1982). Priming and search processes in semantic memory: A test of three models of spreading activation.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,21, 468–492.
Lukatela, G., Feldman, L. B., Turvey, M. T., Carello, C., &Katz, L. (1989). Context effects in bi-alphabetical word perception.Journal of Memory & Language,28, 214–236.
Lukatela, G., Gligorijević, B., Kostić, A., &Turvey, M. T. (1980). Representation of inflected nouns in the internal lexicon.Memory & Cognition,8, 415–423.
Lukatela, G., Lukatela, K., Carello, C., &Turvey, M. T. (1993). Reduction in alphabet priming with delay and degradation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 1094–1100.
Lukatela, G., Turvey, M. T., &Todorovi ć, D. (1991). Is alphabet biasing in bialphabetic word perception automatic and prelexical?Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning,Memory, & Cognition,17, 653–663.
Marslen-Wilson, W., Tyler, L., Waksler, R., &Older, L. (1994). Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon.Psychological Review,101, 3–33.
Partridge, M. (1964).Serbo-Croatian practical grammar and reader. Belgrade: University of Belgrade Press.
Pastizzo, M. J., &Feldman, L. B. (2001a). Discrepancies between orthographic and unrelated baselines in masked priming undermine a decompositional account of morphological facilitation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,28, 244–249.
Pastizzo, M. J., &Feldman, L. B. (2001b). Does prime modality influence morphological processing?Brain & Language,81, 28–41.
Plaut, D. C., &Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Are non-semantic morphological effects incompatible with a distributed connectionist approach to lexical processing?Language & Cognitive Processes,15, 445–486.
Raveh, M. (1999).The contribution of frequency and semantic similarity to morphological processing. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Raveh, M., & Feldman, L. B. (1998, September).The contribution of morphological relatives and affix position to morphological processing. Paper presented at the X Congress of the European Society for Cognitive Psychology, Jerusalem.
Raveh, M., &Rueckl, J. (2000). Equivalent effects of inflected and derived primes: Long-term morphological priming in fragment completion and lexical decision.Journal of Memory & Language,42, 103–119.
Rueckl, J. G., Mikolinski, M., Raveh, M., Miner, C. S., &Mars, F. (1997). Morphological priming, connectionist networks, and masked fragment completion.Journal of Memory & Language,36, 382–405.
Taft, M., &Forster, K. I. (1975). Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,14, 638–647.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This study was supported by funds from National Institutes of Child Health and Development Grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories and by funds from the Faculty of Philosophy at The University of Belgrade in Serbia.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Feldman, L.B., Barac-Cikoja, D. & Kostić, A. Semantic aspects of morphological processing: Transparency effects in Serbian. Memory & Cognition 30, 629–636 (2002). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194964
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03194964