=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1347/paper24
|storemode=property
|title=Morphotactic effects on the processing of Italian derivatives
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper24.pdf
|volume=Vol-1347
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/networds/BertinettoCT15
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==Morphotactic effects on the processing of Italian derivatives==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper24.pdf
Morphotactic effects on the processing of Italian derivatives
Pier Marco Bertinetto Chiara Celata Luigi Talamo
Scuola Normale Superiore Scuola Normale Superiore Università di Bergamo
P.zza dei Cavalieri 7 P.zza dei Cavalieri 7 Piazzetta Verzieri 1
Pisa, Italy Pisa, Italy Bergamo, Italy
bertinetto@sns.it celata@sns.it luigi.talamo@unibg.it
morphotactic transparency. Derived forms per-
Abstract taining to two different classes of morphotactic
transparency but matching for length, average
This paper investigates the processing of
frequency, stress pattern, as well as
Italian affixed forms differing for
morphosemantic transparency were used as im-
morphotactic transparency. A lexical de-
mediate primes in a lexical decision task; the cor-
cision task with immediate priming was
responding underived words were used as tar-
used. Following the principles of
gets. Following the principles of morphotactic
morphotactic transparency and Natural
transparency and Natural Morphology, the prim-
Morphology, the priming effect was hy-
ing effect was hypothesized to be stronger for
pothesized to be stronger for items with a
items with a higher degree of morphotactic
higher degree of morphotactic transpar-
transparency.
ency. However, the predictions were not
totally met. The paper discusses possible 2 Morphotactic Transparency
explanations from the theoretical and
methodological points of view, and high- To date, the only database for morphotactic
lights potential developments of the re- transparency of derivational processes is
search. derIvaTario, an open-source annotated lexicon of
about 11,000 Italian derivatives
1 Introduction (; see Talamo & Celata,
2011; Talamo et al., submitted). The lexical
According to Dressler (1985, 2005),
source of derIvaTario is CoLFIS, Corpus e
morphotactic transparency is one of the main
Lessico di Frequenza dell’Italiano Scritto
parameters within the universal markedness the-
(Bertinetto et al. 2005), a fully lemmatized three-
ory of the so-called System-Independent Mor-
millions word corpus of written Italian, sampled
phological Naturalness. It assumes the wide-
out of a carefully balanced variety of books,
spread existence of “opacifying obstructions”
journals and newspapers. CoLFIS was created
(Dressler, 2005: 272) in inflectional, derivational
with the purpose of representing the mental lexi-
or compounding processes, and is expressed by
con of the ideal Italian speaker – or, more exact-
preference degrees along a naturalness scale. The
ly, reader – as reliably as possible (Laudanna et
most natural forms are those without opacifying
al., 1995).
obstructions, followed by those based on mildly
derIvaTario takes into account several mor-
opacifying phonological processes (such as
phological properties of the base and of each af-
resyllabification), while allomorphic rules and
fix involved in the derivational cycles, crucially
suppletion are the most opaque and least natural
including morphotactic and morphosemantic
morphological operations. In this approach, natu-
transparency (see Libben, 1998 and Dressler,
ral is synonymous with cognitively simple, icon-
2005 for the latter). With respect to the former,
ic and therefore easy to acquire and process.
derIvaTario provides a value according to the
This work investigates the native speakers’
Universal Scale of Morphotactic Transparency
processing of Italian affixed forms differing for
(Dressler, 1985 and 2005). The scale values
Copyright © by the paper’s authors. Copying permitted for private and academic purposes.
In Vito Pirrelli, Claudia Marzi, Marcello Ferro (eds.): Word Structure and Word Usage. Proceedings of the NetWordS Final
Conference, Pisa, March 30-April 1, 2015, published at http://ceur-ws.org
109
range from mt1 to mt8, as shown in Appendix A. The priming effect of the derivatives was as-
The items used in the present experiment be- sessed as the average RT difference between the
longed to two sets of derivatives, respectively morphological condition and the identity and
characterized by full transparency (mt1) and rela- unrelated conditions. A statistically significant
tive opacity (mt4). interaction between priming condition (morpho-
logical, identity, unrelated) and morphotactic
3 Experiment transparency (mt1 vs. mt4) would suggest that
the morphotactic contrast is cognitively salient.
3.1 Materials and methods
Adult native Italian speakers participated in a 3.2 Results
speeded lexical decision task with orthographic Repeated measure ANOVAs were run with prim-
stimuli. 32 words and 32 nonwords functioned as ing condition as within-subject factor and
targets. Each target (consisting of an underived morphotactic transparency as between-subject
word) was immediately preceded by a prime in factor. The mean results are shown in Table 1.
three different conditions: morphological (e.g. Comparing the morphological and the unrelated
ribellione/ribelle, ‘rebellion/rebel’), identity conditions, mt1 primes facilitated target recogni-
(ribelle/ribelle) and unrelated (xxxxxx/ribelle). tion to a larger extent than mt4 primes. Similarly,
Participants saw each target in only one of the comparing the morphological condition with the
three conditions. The test items are listed in Ap- identity condition, mt4 primes slowed down tar-
pendix B. get recognition to a larger extent than mt1
All primes were morphosemantically fully primes. Although the general tendency was con-
transparent. Half of them were classified as mt1 sistent with the experimental hypothesis, the in-
according to derIvaTario (full transparency), the teraction condition x morphotactic transparency
other half as mt4 (with intervening morpho- was not significant (Pillai’s trace F=0.547, p >
phonological opacifying process). The two .05). Thus, although the priming effect exerted
groups were carefully balanced for: (a) average by mt4 derivatives onto the corresponding un-
lexical frequencies of both primes and targets, derived words was weaker than the one yielded
(b) length of prime and target (as measured by N by mt1 derivatives, the current experiment does
of phonemes and N of graphemes), and (c) type not support the initial hypothesis.
of base. The last point needs clarification. As is
well-known, Italian morphology is not word- Table 1. Average reaction times and differential prim-
based, i.e. the base does not correspond to an ing (ms) across conditions and transparency levels.
actual word. Since derIvaTario assumes 7 base
types, it was necessary to control for the possible identity morphological unrelated
effect of this variable. Only the two most fre- mt1 491 547 631
diff. 56 84
quent base types were used in the present exper- mt4 502 573 637
iment: (i) root, i.e. an underived word without diff. 71 64
inflectional ending (e.g. bellezza ‘beauty’ as
based on the root bell- of bello ‘beauti-
ful.M.SG.’), (ii) verbal theme, i.e. a verb root plus 4 Discussion
the thematic vowel (e.g. battimento ‘beat’ as The purpose of this experiment was to investi-
based on the verbal theme batti- of battere ‘to gate whether morphotactic transparency is a cog-
beat’). These two base types were equally dis- nitively relevant factor in the processing of Ital-
tributed within the two word sets: 11 verbal ian base forms when primed by corresponding
themes, 5 roots. derivatives. A significant differential priming
Nonwords were created by replacing one pho- effect was expected between mt1 and mt4
neme in real Italian derivatives and the corre- primes, which would have lent support to the
sponding underived words. They had the same Universal Scale of Morphotactic Transparency as
average length as the test words. implemented by derIvaTario. The experiment,
The order of words and nonwords was ran- however, did not produce the expected result,
domized across participants. Before performing despite encouraging tendencies.
the task, the participants were trained on a list of A possible explanation for this result is the
8 items (4 words, 4 nonwords). strictly on-line character of the technique used
110
(immediate priming). As Laudanna et al. (2004) Luigi Talamo, Pier Marco Bertinetto, and Chiara
have shown for verbal inflection, the effect of Celata C. (submitted) DERIVATARIO: An annotated
complex morphological properties on the pro- lexicon of Italian derivatives.
cessing of isolated words is more likely to be
detected in off-line techniques, such as free recall Appendix A. Scale of morphotactic trans-
tasks, implying a short-term and/or episodic parency.
memory component. DEGREE NATURE OF PHENOMENON
In addition, the assumed difference between mt1 none
transparent and partially opaque derivatives in mt2 purely prosodic and phonological
(e.g. resyllabification, assimilation)
priming their base forms might surface to a larg- mt3 phonological, with neutralization of phonetic constitu-
er extent when the morphological condition is ents (e.g. flapping)
compared with a phonological priming condition mt4 morpho-phonological, without loss of constituents
(e.g. articulatory weakening)
(e.g. colazione/colare ‘breakfast/percolate’), in mt5 morpho-phonological, with loss of constituents
which no morphological relatedness is found (e.g. deletion)
between the prime and the target, although their mt6 purely morphological
(e.g. paradigmatic alternation of affixes)
formal relationship is the same as in a morpho- mt7 lexical: weak suppletion
logically related pair (e.g. formazione/formare mt8 lexical: strong suppletion
‘formation/form’). This hypothesis is currently
under investigation.
Appendix B. Experimental words.
Mt1 Mt4
References Prime Target Prime Target
disegnatore disegnare traducibile tradurre
Pier Marco Bertinetto, Cristina Burani, Alessandro bruciatore bruciare discutibile discutere
Laudanna, Lucia Marconi, Daniela Ratti, Claudia suggeritore suggerire tessitura tessere
Rolando, and Anna Maria Thornton. 2005. Corpus cancellazione cancellare competitore competere
e Lessico di Frequenza dell’Italiano Scritto (CoL- esclamazione esclamare emettitore emettere
FIS). http://linguistica.sns.it/CoLFIS/Home.htm dominazione dominare roditore rodere
nuotatore nuotare scommettitore scommettere
Wolfgang U. Dressler 1985. On the Predictiveness of accentuzione accentuare perseguibile perseguire
Natural Morphology. Journal of Linguistics, 21(2): bollitura bollire godibile godere
piegatura piegare cedimento cedere
321–337. fregatura fregare spargimento spargere
Wolfgang U. Dressler 2005. Word-Formation in Nat- intrusione intruso rassegnazione rassegnato
perversione perverso concitazione concitato
ural Morphology. In: Štichauer P., Lieber R. (eds) ribellione ribelle desolazione desolato
Handbook of Word-Formation, Springer: 267–284. introversione introverso discrezione discreto
avversione avverso depravazione deparavato
Alessandro Laudanna, Simone Gazzellini, and Maria
de Martino 2004. Representation of grammatical
properties of Italian verbs in the mental lexicon.
Brain and Language 90: 95–105.
Alessandro Laudanna, Anna Maria Thornton, Giorgi-
na Brown, Cristina Burani, and Lucia Marconi
1995. Un corpus dell’italiano scritto contempora-
neo dalla parte del ricevente. In: Bolasco S., Lebart
L., Salem A. (eds) III Giornate internazionali di
Analisi Statistica dei Dati Testuali, Roma: Cisu:
103–109.
Gary Libben 1998. Semantic Transparency in the
Processing of Compounds: Consequences for Rep-
resentation, Processing, and Impairment. Brain and
Language 61: 30–44.
Luigi Talamo and Chiara Celata 2011. Toward a mor-
phological analysis of the Italian lexicon: develop-
ing tools for a corpus-based approach. Quaderni
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111