=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1347/paper27
|storemode=property
|title=Suffix perceptual salience in morphological processing: evidence from Italian
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper27.pdf
|volume=Vol-1347
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/networds/GiraudoM15
}}
==Suffix perceptual salience in morphological processing: evidence from Italian==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1347/paper27.pdf
Suffix perceptual salience in morphological
processing: evidence from Italian
Hélène Giraudo Serena Dal Maso
Laboratoire CLLE (Equipe ERSS) Dip. Lingue e Letterature Straniere
CNRS & Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès serena.dalmaso@univr.it
giraudo@univ-tlse2.fr
es on the effect of the (visual) presentation of a
Abstract stimulus word (the ‘prime’) on the recognition of
a target word. Experimental results indicate that
The goal of the present research is to de-
the recognition of the target word is faster when
termine the role of suffixes and morpho-
it is preceded by a morphologically related prime
logical schemas in the access and pro-
(e.g. kindness/ KIND), compared to cases where
cessing of Italian complex words and to
it is preceded by an unrelated word (e.g. raw/
investigate whether (and possibly to what
KIND) or by an only orthographically similar
extent) suffix salience affects such pro-
word (e.g. kin/ KIND; kite/ KIND). According to
cesses. Two experiments using the
Forster, these results show that “the cortical rep-
masked-priming methodology will con-
resentations of the prime and the target are inter-
tribute to verify if native speakers of Ital-
connected or overlap in some way such that the
ian organize lexical items according to
representation of the prime automatically acti-
morphological series as they do accord-
vates the representation of the target word” (For-
ing to morphological families.
ster, 1999).
1 Introduction On the other hand, the relationship between
words with the same suffix and the same mor-
In usage-based approaches to language represen- phological schema (in constructional terms), like
tation and process (mainly Bybee’s Network kindness/ happiness/ sadness, has been scarcely
Model and Booij’s Constructional Morphology), investigated yet and results do not allow a con-
morphology is generally conceived as organizing sistent and univocal interpretation. Marslen-
the lexicon according to two main dimensions: i) Wilson et al. 1996 investigated the role of suffix-
morphological families, i.e. words connected es in English with a cross-modal technique and
because sharing the same root: kind/ kindness/ found a significant priming effect for morpholog-
kindly/ unkind/ kind-hearted, etc. and ii) morpho- ically related words (e.g. darkness/ TOUGH-
logical series, i.e. words connected because shar- NESS) and no hints of orthographic priming
ing the same affix kindness/ happiness/ sadness/ when the overlap did not involve real suffixes
abruptness, etc. Psycholinguistic research has (e.g. darkness / HARNESS). More recently, Du-
mostly confirmed this view, demonstrating with ñabeitia, Perea & Carreiras 2008 found signifi-
experimental data that words in the mental lexi- cant facilitation effects on the recognition of suf-
con are stored according to formal and semantic fixed words in Spanish employing a series of
similarity, thus following morphological princi- experiments with different degrees of prime
ples. segmentation: 1) er/ WALKER; 2) %%%%er/
More specifically, the relationship between WALKER; 3) baker/ WALKER. The experi-
morphologically complex words and their roots ments revealed priming effects in all the condi-
(or other members of the same morphological tions (independently from the degree of segmen-
family) has been extensively investigated by tation of the prime) and a clear dissociation be-
means of the masked-priming experimental par- tween orthographic and morphological priming
adigm (i.e. Stanners, Neiser, Hernon & Hall, (e.g. brevidad primes igualdad but volumen does
1979; Rastle, Davis, Marslen-Wilson & Tyler, not prime certamen). Taken together these re-
2000; Clahsen, Sonnenstuhl & Blevins, 2003; sults were interpreted as a strong evidence in fa-
Rastle, Davis & New, 2004; Frost, Kugler, vor of an early prelexical morphological decom-
Deutsch & Forster, 2005). This technique focus- position (e.g., Duñabeitia et al., 2007; Rastle et
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
120
al, 2004) of all forms that can be potentially split than French, Italian has relatively long suffixes
into two “surface morphemes” (see for details (e.g. lat. -ĭttu(m) > it. -etto vs. fr. –et, realized
Rastle & Davis, 2008) acknowledging to both phonetically as [e] as in it. muretto/fr. muret).
stems and affixes an equal status of access units Moreover, as a result of the fact that Italian
during word recognition. has undergone little phonological reduction, it
However, when Giraudo & Grainger 2003 ad- has a high degree of orthographic transparency
dressed this issue using French materials and an and consistency, which can contribute to the per-
experimental design controlling the effect of ception and representation of functional word
morphological primes relative to formal primes, endings (Taft 2003).
results did not show any reliable morphological Finally, although in Italian the great majority
priming effect, i.e. both priming conditions pro- of suffixed words are paroxytone, i.e. stressed on
duced significant priming effects relative to the the penultimate syllable, as suffix generally carry
unrelated baseline but the morphological condi- the word stress, there is a limited number of pro-
tion did not yield significantly faster RTs with paroxytone words (i.e. stressed on the third to
respect to the orthographic condition. Note that, last syllable, with a suffix which does not carry
according to within priming comparisons, the the word stress). Consequently, suffixed words in
effect of morphological primes is compared to Italian can have different prosodic contours and
the effect of the orthographic primes on the same suffixes can show different degrees of perceptual
targets, e.g., fumet ‘scent’ - MURET ‘down wall’ prominence at the prosodic level. For these rea-
vs. béret ‘beret’- MURET ‘down wall’, conside- sons, we considered Italian as an ideal test situa-
ring that fumet and muret share the same functio- tion to verify the role of salience on suffixed
nal suffix –et, while béret and muret do not be- word processing and access.
cause béret is a monomophemic word in French More precisely, for our experiments we select-
and ber- is not a possible stem. Giraudo and ed some productive suffixes –tore, –ico and -etto
Grainger, who conversely found in the same because they show different segmental and pro-
study clear morphological priming effects when sodic features.
manipulating prefixed words, interpreted these Moreover, they have different degrees of
asymmetrical results on the base of different se- functional consistency, i.e. a different propor-
mantic and syntactic functions carried by prefix- tion between suffixed and non-suffixed words
es and suffixes in French. An alternative expla- (i.e. monomophemic words) in a series of
nation for the results of Giraudo & Grainger words ending with a given letter string (Lau-
study could be linked to the issue of perceptual danna et al. 1994). As a matter of fact, while
salience of suffixes (i.e. their size and segmental- 78% of the words ending with –tore and
prosodic features) and to the connected degree of 52,04% of words with –ico are suffixed, only
suffix likelihood (the probability for a word to be 20% of the words ending with –etto is suffixed
a suffixed word). As a matter of fact, it seems (quantitative data are taken from COLFIS and
that the more a word ending is salient and func- Derivatario). The criteria according to which
tionally consistent, the stronger the probability it we defined the perceptual salience of the suf-
is a suffix. fixes are:
i. size of the suffix (number of phonemes
and graphemes);
2 The present study ii. different degrees of morpho-tactic
transparency (Dressler 1985) and of phono-
On such premises, in the present research we
logical integration of the suffix to the base, in
verify by means of a masked priming experiment
particular in relation to the phenomenon of:
and a within-comparison design whether the pro-
-‐ resyllabification: no resyllabification
cessing of morphologically complex words is
takes place with -tore which has always two
affected by the morphological schema and, more
syllables, independently from the root, where-
specifically, whether the processing is affected
as –ico, and –etto, starting with a vowel, are
by the formal salience of the suffix.
more integrated with the stem ([i] and [e] be-
We choose to run the experiments on Italian
come the coda of the last syllable of the stem
not only because Italian has a rich, productive
(sto.ria/ sto.ri.co) and the suffixed word is re-
and relatively regular morphology, but also be-
syllabified);
cause, being a phonetically ‘conservative’ lan-
-‐ morphological boundary: with -tore the
guage, at least significantly more conservative
boundary of the suffix always coincides with
121
the boundary of the syllable, whereas with – strength of the connection between words shar-
ico and –etto the suffix is split in the two last ing the same stem (educare / EDUCATORE, nos-
syllables. In the Natural Morphology frame- talgia / NOSTALGICO, pezzo / PEZZETTO).
work, the more the morphology overlaps with In the second experiment we will focus on the
the phonological components (i.e. the higher issue of the sequential organization of the word,
the morpho-tactic transparency) the easier the namely that the access and processing of a suf-
recognition; fixed word is affected by the position of the suf-
iii. word stress: the suffixes -tore and –etto fix at the end of the word and by the (visual) per-
always carries the word stress, while -ico does ception of the final part of the word. In order to
not. Moreover, in Italian, the stressed syllable verify this aspect, we will use the same critical
has a long vowel [–’to:re] which, although not materials as in the first experiment but we will
phonological, may constitute a perceptual hint manipulate the location of the fixation point.
for an easier identification. Finally, words Specifically, in the forward mask which pre-
with –tore and –etto show the more frequent cedes the presentation of the prime/target pairs,
stress pattern in Italian (about 80% of the the fixation marks (####), whose aim is to focus
words have the word stress on the penultimate attention on a certain point of the screen, will
syllable, Thornton, Iacobini & Burani 1997, overlap with the suffix position.
see Burani & Arduino 2004 and Giraudo & To sum up, our research will contribute to ver-
Montermini 2010 on the effect of stress regu- ify the role of suffixes and morphological sche-
larity and stress consistency in stress assign- mas in the access and processing of Italian com-
ment for Italian words). plex words and to investigate whether (and pos-
According to these criteria – tore is the most sibly to what extent) suffix salience affects such
salient suffix and –etto is more salient than –ico. process. Results will indicate if native speakers
In the first experiment we will verify: a) of Italian organize lexical items according to
whether words with a perceptually salient suffix morphological series as they do according to
like –tore are recognized faster than words with a morphological families.
less salient suffix like –ico. If this would be the
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