MORPHOLOGY & THE
MENTAL LEXICON
DAY 25 – OCT 25, 2013
Brain & Language
LING 4110-4890-5110-7960
NSCI 4110-4891-6110
Harry Howard
Tulane University
10/25/13
Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
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Course organization
• The syllabus, these slides and my recordings are
available at http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LING4110/.
• If you want to learn more about EEG and neurolinguistics,
you are welcome to participate in my lab. This is also a
good way to get started on an honor's thesis.
• The grades are posted to Blackboard.
10/25/13
REVIEW
Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
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Summary of lateralization of phonology
LH, small window of temporal
integration
RH, large window of temporal
integration
high temporal frequency:
rapid cues, like stops
low temporal frequency:
slow cues, like vowels
high spectral frequency:
formants
low spectral frequency:
fundamental
categorical distinctions:
lexical, phrasal, clausal stress;
lexical tone in Thai/Chinese
graded/coordinate distinctions:
emotional intonation,
sentence type?
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A theory of how the brain works
• The five theories of the lateralization of phonology that we
have reviewed gradually converge towards lateralization
as a kind of calculation or computation.
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A neuron as a computation, if not a calculation
dendrite a
dendrite b
dendrite c
dendrite d
axon
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
MORPHOLOGY & THE
MENTAL LEXICON
Ingram: III. Lexical semantics, §9.
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
Linguistic model, Fig. 2.1 p. 37
Discourse model
Sentence level
Word level
Syntax
S
E
M
A
N
T
I
C
S
Sentence prosody
Morphology
Word prosody
Segmental phonology
production
Segmental phonology
perception
Articulatory phonetics
Speech motor control
Acoustic phonetics
Feature extraction
INPUT
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
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Dual-route model
verb + past tense
lexical route
compositional route
meaning
/di.paɹ.t + ɪd/
morphological
analysis
/di.paɹ.tɪd/
/wɪnt/
phonological input
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What is a word?
• Phonologically
• a spike in the level of uncertainty as to what the next sound will be
• d
• o
• g
• ?
• Semantically
• that is the topic of this chapter
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Morphological decomposition
• Recall that words can be analyzed in terms of inflection &
derivation
• inflection: cats > cat+s, sleeping > sleep+ing
• derivation: government > govern+ment
• argument
• detriment
• department
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
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Form-frequency relations in English past tense
Table 1.9
Basic form
Past tense
Occurrence in speech
Morphological type
go
went
high token frequency
suppletive
leave
left
mid token frequency
partially regular
depart
departed
low token frequency
(fully) regular
These relations generalize to other morphemes and other
languages, eg. tack~tacks, knife~knives, ox~oxen.
Can one learning model account for all three,
or is a dual-route model necessary,
or perhaps even a triple-route model?
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What does ‘to prime the pump’ mean?
• What is priming in
psychology?
• ‘the facilitatory effect
that presentation of an
item can have on the
response to a
subsequent item’
• usually measured in
terms of reaction time
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
An example of priming
Table 9.2
Conditions
prime ~ probe
Priming effect
[+morph, +phon]
friendly ~ friend
yes
[+morph, –phon]
elusive ~ elude
yes
[+morph, –phon]
serenity ~ serene
yes
[–morph, +phon]
tinsel ~ tin
no
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
What causes the priming effect?
Table 9.3
Conditions
prime ~ probe
Priming effect
[–sem, +morph]
casualty ~ casual
no
[+sem, +morph]
punishment ~ punish
yes
[+sem, –morph, –phon]
idea ~ notion
yes
[–sem, –morph, +phon]
bulletin ~ bullet
no
Answer: The semantic relationship.
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Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
What causes the priming effect?
Table 9.4
Conditions
prime ~ probe
Priming effect
1. [–sem, +morph]
casualty ~ casual
no
2. [+sem, +morph]
punishment ~ punish
yes
3. [–sem, +morph]
successful ~ successor
no
4. [+sem, +morph]
confession ~ confessor
no
5. [–sem, +morph]
restrain ~ strain
no
6. [+sem, +morph]
insincere ~ sincere
yes
7. [–sem, +morph]
depress ~ express
no
8. [+sem, +morph]
unfasten ~ refasten
yes
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10/28/13
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A little too early
• The previous experiment suggests that prefixes and
suffixes are processed differently.
• I want to introduce a model of word semantics first, and then we will
return to this issue.
• Ingram has a good summary of a PET and a MEG
experiment on morphological processing.
• MEG is more informative, but to understand the results, we need to
wait until we have discussed Broca’s area.
10/25/13
Brain & Language - Harry Howard - Tulane University
NEXT TIME
Q7
Start word semantics
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