What Links Snow to Dough: Investigating the Processing Mechanisms for Spoken Complex Words

What links snow to dough: Investigating the processing mechanisms for spoken complex words

ABSTRACT

The properties of the English past tense enable us to probe both the nature of the mental computation of language as well as the nature of lexical representation. A plethora of behavioural research has attempted to determine the presence of independent morphological processing as well as compare and contrast the way that regular and irregular verbs are processed and represented. However, the dominant methodology, namely morphological priming remains subject to the objections of joint interaction theorists, postulating that morphological effects can be reduced to the joint interactions of semantics and phonology. Utilising rhyme priming in a lexical decision task, our study removed semantic confounds while controlling for phonological factors. Ultimately providing evidence for independent morphological processing and the discociability of regular and irregular verbs free of the potential confound of semantic and phonological interaction. Suggesting that our data is best explained by underlying neurocognitive distinctions between the verb sub-types accounted for by a dual-mechanism model.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

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OUR STUDY

METHODS

Materials

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Design

Procedure

ANALYSIS

DISCUSSION

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CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

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BACKGROUND

In language the connection between sound and meaning is ultimately arbitrary, with the sound alone not encoding any lexical information. However, morphology, the way in which words are formed and structured, captures consistencies in language and thus imposes a level of systemisation onto these sound to meaning mappings. These consistencies (morphemes[1]) have a meaning of their own that can be applied to other words. For example, the suffix -ed when found with in conjunction with a verb stem indicates that the action implied by the stem, be it to jump to climb or to study, occurred in the past. This ability to combine and convert words using morphology is critical for language productivity, especially in regards to syntax as small numbers of inflectional elements are recombined to help express infinite number of thoughts, opinions, concepts and actions.

Complex words, resulting from combining morphemes, raise questions not only about the processing and representational ramifications of morphology but also about lexical representation in entirety. Theoretically if morphological informational was processed, cognitively encoded and formed part of the structure of our lexical representations it could be used as a principle of lexical organisation and processing. In contrast to this morphemic approach it is possible that morphology does not form part of our lexical representations and items are stored as whole-words. Despite extensive research exactly how morphology is mapped onto our neurocognitive reality remains unclear. In particular research has focused on inflectional morphology as the properties of the English past tense allow us to directly contrast these two approaches to lexical representation. Although both regular and irregular past tense verbs carry comparable syntactic and semantic information they differ in regards to morphology. Past tense regular verbs (e.g. snowed, travelled, slipped), formed by combining a phonologically unchanged stem with the inflectional suffix –ed, are morphophono-logically overt as they can be easily decomposed back into a stem + affix format. While past tense irregular verbs (e.g. rode, sank, sung) do not have a predictable relationship between their stem and inflected form, so they cannot be decomposed in the same way into a stem + affix structure and thus are morphophono-logically hidden.

In addition to these differences in morphology, English past tense also provides a contrast between the rule-like pattern of regular verbs and an idiosyncratic irregular form.  Excluding the approximately 160 irregular verbs, the formation of past tense verbs is rule-like as it involves the predictable addition of –ed to the verb stem, with the exact pronunciation (/d/, /t/, or /Id/) dictated by the phonological form of the stem.

These properties of the English past tense enable us to probe both the nature of the mental computation of language as well as the nature of lexical representation. Whether these differences in linguistic properties reflect differences in lexical representations is a subject of much debate, with major theories of lexical representation holding conflicting views.

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Single mechanism models utilise a connectionist theory (Rumelhart and McClelland, 1986) holding that both regular and irregular verbs are processed by a single mechanism based on phonology and semantics. This theory suggests that morphology simply reflects the statistical correspondence between form and meaning, thus stems and inflectional morphemes are not separable and that inflected forms are learned and represented as whole forms but with overlap with other forms based on phonological and semantic similarities.

Competing views postulate that different neurocognitive mechanisms underpin the processing and representation of regular and irregular verbs. These dual mechanism theories agree that there are different processes at work, but conjecture over the finer details has led to slight variations on the theory. However, almost all agree that irregular forms must be represented as indecomposable whole forms as well as learned and processed using a connectionist mechanism.

Pinker, Ullman and colleagues (date) describe a rule-based system utilising symbolic computations to dictate the process of regular inflection. In this system the suffix –ed is automatically added to regularly inflected verbs, while irregular verbs utilise an associative memory system which encodes their past tense forms as wholes. In regards to the nature of lexical representation this model posits that regular verbs have one entry in the lexicon for the stem, while irregular verbs have two, though the past tense entry is stored separately in a pattern-association network away from its stem. As this theory makes a categorical distinction between rule-generated verbs and the irregular exceptions it would predict that there are strong dissociations between the two processes.

Marslen-Wilson and Tyler (1998) theorise that the dissociations between the two verb sub-types are not due to regulars being formed by a rule, but instead for access in comprehension they require phonological disassembly while irregulars, as they lack overt morphophono-logical structure, are accessed through a full-form route. But like the previous model agrees that irregulars unlike regular verbs do not share a lexical representation with their stems.

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However, compelling neuropsychological evidence for two separable neural systems continued to mount. With numerous studies (X) demonstrating that stroke patients can have selective deficits in either irregular or regular inflection. The led to the revised single mechanism model (Joanisse and Seidenberg, 1999) where although the underlying mechanism remains connectionist there are phonological and semantic subsystems. With irregular verbs being more dependent on the meaning and thus the semantic subsystem, while regulars are more dependent on phonology and thus utilise the phonological subsystem. Thus this model attributes the neuropsychological dissociations as damage to either subsystem, while remaining a single mechanism model without Independent Morphological Processing (IMP).

Therefore to resolve this controversy a plethora of behavioural research has attempted to clarify whether IMP occurs as well as compare and contrast the way that regular and irregular verbs are processed and represented, and when contrasts are found if they can be attributed to a single-mechanism model or if they reflect underlying neurocognitive distinctions explained by a dual-mechanism model.

In regards to dissociations between the processing of regular and irregular verbs it has been generally found that regular verbs are facilitated when preceded by a morphologically related prime (Rastle et al, 2000). While irregular verbs are less consistent, sometimes producing weaker or non-existing priming effects (Stanners, Neiser, Hernon, and Hall, 1979); Napps ,1989; Kempley and Morton, 1982)  but not always with many studies reporting priming effects with both regular and irregular verbs (Davis, Schoknecht, and Carter ,1987; Marslen-Wilson and Tyler, 1997; Tyler et al., 2002). Similarly the dominant methodologies for investigating IMP, such as lexical decision tasks and morpheme frequency effects (Bertram at al, 2000, Clahsen et al, 2005), are mixed. Although morphological priming has shown facilitation (Marslen-Wilson, 2007) it is difficult to dissociate the effects of morphology from the effects of phonology and semantics, thus these results remain inconclusive.

INTRODUCTION

Previous methodologies aiming to elucidate the theory of IMP failed to exclude a possible interplay between morphology, semantics and phonology. As any regular past tense item (jump –ed) is phonologically, morphologically and semantically related to its stem (jump). Therefore any apparent morphological effects could be reduced to interactions between semantics and phonology, and thus remain in keeping with a single mechanism model.

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Attempts to behaviourally distinguish between these alternative explanations have utilised long-distance priming, where the prime is separated from the target by a number of intervening items (Marslen-Wilson, 2007; Kouider and Dupoux, 2009). Facilitation has been reported for morphological priming at longer distances than for phonological and semantic priming, leading to the conclusion that this extended facilitation was due to the independence of morphological effects from phonology and semantics (Kouider and Dupoux, 2009). This has been criticised (Gonnerman, Seidenberg and Andersen, 2007) as the effects seen could be due to the joint interaction between semantic and phonological similarity, and that once again morphology is not processed independently.

The joint interaction theory postulates that any observed morphological effect relies on the co-presence of shared semantics and phonology. Therefore if one of these elements was removed, while controlling the other, the joint interaction theory could be rejected in favour of evidence for IMP.

A recent novel methodology removed this joint interaction confound by utilising rhyme priming (Bacovcin et al, 2017). Rhyme priming investigates facilitation effects caused by a rhyme, which in phonological terms is defined as a shared vowel and coda consonants. Rhyme priming has previously been used to explore phonological processing, demonstrating that the facilitation seen is due to the combined but ultimately separate effects of rhyme and phonological relatedness (Slowlaczek, 2000), with a shared rhyme resulting in strong facilitation while phonological relatedness only produces a weak priming effect. Adaption of this methodology has allowed a direct investigation of morphological processing, while avoiding the potential confound of joint interaction by eliminating semantic similarity and providing controls for phonological relatedness.

This study provided evidence that stem access during the processing of a morphologically complex word is morphological in nature. Facilitation was seen with a prime (dough) that rhymed with a complex word target (snowed) despite the pair being semantically and relatively phonetically unrelated. Therefore the facilitation seen reflects morphological access of the stem (snow) due to its rhyming relationship with the prime (dough) and cannot be due to an interaction of semantics and phonology.

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OUR STUDY

We aim to replicate the findings of Bacovcin et al (2017) and extend their methodology to encompass irregular verbs. To test whether irregular verbs undergo IMP we will utilize a prime (pink) that rhymes with a complex past tense irregular verb target (sank). This is essentially equivalent to the (dough  snowed) regular verb example except that irregular verbs are morphophono-logically hidden and thus cannot be comparably segmented. Demonstrating whether the irregular verb stem is accessed during complex word processing will provide evidence for the dissociability of the two verb sub-types. This in conjunction with potentially replicating findings regarding IMP will provide compelling behavioural evidence for a dual-mechanism model and against a single-mechanism one.

The original experiment included four conditions, two aimed to study the main effect while two provided phonological controls. The first condition, the bare stem, used a regular verb stem as the target with a rhyming prime (dough  snow). This condition further replicated results from rhyme priming and acts as a point of comparison for condition two. Condition two, the past tense, consisted of the decisive morphologically complex regular verb form as the target while the prime rhymed with its stem (dough  snowed).

The third and fourth conditions were controls for particular phonological confounds. The third, past tense rhyme control, aimed to show that any facilitation seen in the second condition was not due to the partial rhyme that exists between the prime and the target. This partial rhyme results from the fact that the both prime and target share a syllable nucleus. This control utilises targets that were non-morphologically complex words, words that cannot be decomposed into a stem and an affix, which shared a syllable nucleus with the prime. Alternatively the target can be thought of as a word that rhymes with the regular past tense target from condition two, e.g. (dough  code, as dough and code share a syllable nucleus exemplified by the fact that code and snowed rhyme). Any facilitation seen in condition three would be due to the partial phonological overlap caused by the shared syllable nucleus, meaning that the facilitation seen in condition two could be explained by partial rhyme and not by morphological access. Condition three also aims

Condition four addresses the potential confound of word embedding. Due to the incremental nature of auditory speech processing, any facilitation seen may be due to the priming effect caused by the phonologically embedded word, and not by the morphological relationship of the target to the stem (E.g. dough  snowed, any facilitation seen could be due to the phonological embedding of snow and thus the facilitation is picking up on the relationship between dough and snow, not dough and snowed).  This control utilises targets that phonologically embed other words (grove embeds grow), but the embedded words are not morphologically related to the target (grow is not morphologically related to grove), while the prime rhymes with the embedded word (dough  grove). This is therefore reflective of the embedding seen in condition two, thus if facilitation is seen in condition four it is evidence that any facilitation seen in condition two is due to phonological embedding resulting in stem access and not due to IMP.

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Conditions five and six are the novel conditions aiming to see whether this rhyme priming methodology can be applied to irregular verbs. Condition five, essentially repeats condition one but with an irregular verb stem as the target (pink  sink) and has the similar aims of replicating rhyme priming results as well as acting as a comparison for condition six. Condition six, the key experimental condition, utilises an irregular verb form as the target while the prime rhymes with its stem (pink  sank). Facilitation seen here would provide evidence for IMP of irregular verbs while if not, it would provide evidence for the disscociability of regular and irregular verb processing and representation.

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METHODS

Fifty-six individuals (34 male, 22 female) were recruited through social media advertisements. All participants were native English speakers with no hearing or language difficulties. Prior to the experiment the Psychology Department Ethics Committee granted ethical approval. Informed consent was obtained prior to the test and consent to use the collected data was obtained at the end of the experiment. On completion the participants were remunerated 5 pounds.

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Materials

The materials consisted of six conditions:

1.  Regular verb base stem
2.  Regular verb past tense
3.  Past tense rhyme control
4.  Embedded control
5.  Irregular verb base stems
6.  Irregular verb past tense

Each condition contains 20 prime-target pairs. See table (1).

Table 1: Examples and Explanations of the relationships between Prime and Target Experimental Stimuli

Using Match software (van Casteren and Davis, 2007), the target stimuli were matched as close as possible on word frequency (occurrence per million words), number of syllables and number of phonemes using data from the N-watch programme (Davis, 2005). See Table 2.