Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect.

doi:10.1080/02724980343000477

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Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect.

Journal Article•DOI•

Morphological decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect.

Marcus Taft¹•Institutions (1)

University of New South Wales¹

01 May 2004-Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (Taylor & Francis Group)-Vol. 57, Iss: 4, pp 745-765

TL;DR: Two experiments are reported here that demonstrate how an obligatory decomposition account can handle the absence of base frequency effects, and it is shown that the later stage of recombining the stem and affix is harder for high base frequency words than for lower base frequencyWords when matched on surface frequency, and that this can counterbalance the advantage of easier access to the higher frequency stem.

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Abstract: If recognition of a polymorphemic word always takes place via its decomposition into stem and affix, then the higher the frequency of its stem (i.e., base frequency) the easier the lexical decision...

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Journal Article•DOI•

Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English

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Marc Brysbaert¹, Boris New²•Institutions (2)

Ghent University¹, Paris Descartes University²

01 Nov 2009-Behavior Research Methods

TL;DR: The size of the corpus, the language register on which the corpus is based, and the definition of the frequency measure were investigated, finding that lemma frequencies are not superior to word form frequencies in English and that a measure of contextual diversity is better than a measure based on raw frequency of occurrence.

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Abstract: Word frequency is the most important variable in research on word processing and memory. Yet, the main criterion for selecting word frequency norms has been the availability of the measure, rather than its quality. As a result, much research is still based on the old Kucera and Francis frequency norms. By using the lexical decision times of recently published megastudies, we show how bad this measure is and what must be done to improve it. In particular, we investigated the size of the corpus, the language register on which the corpus is based, and the definition of the frequency measure. We observed that corpus size is of practical importance for small sizes (depending on the frequency of the word), but not for sizes above 16–30 million words. As for the language register, we found that frequencies based on television and film subtitles are better than frequencies based on written sources, certainly for the monosyllabic and bisyllabic words used in psycholinguistic research. Finally, we found that lemma frequencies are not superior to word form frequencies in English and that a measure of contextual diversity is better than a measure based on raw frequency of occurrence. Part of the superiority of the latter is due to the words that are frequently used as names. Assembling a new frequency norm on the basis of these considerations turned out to predict word processing times much better than did the existing norms (including Kucera & Francis and Celex). The new SUBTL frequency norms from the SUBTLEXUS corpus are freely available for research purposes from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental, as well as from the University of Ghent and Lexique Web sites.

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2,106 citations

Cites background from "Morphological decomposition and the..."

...Such a view is particularly appealing within theories that postulate a process of morphological decomposition for the recognition of inflected words (e.g., Clahsen, 1999; Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004; Taft, 2004)....
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...We will report only data on the lexical decision times, because the effect of word frequency is particularly strong in this task (Balota et al., 2004) and the results did not differ as a function of the task (see Table 6). All regression analyses reported in this article included four predictors: log10(frequency11), log210(frequency11), number of letters in the word, and number of syllables in the word. Log210(frequency11) was included because Balota et al. (2004) observed that the relationship between word frequencies and word processing times is not fully captured by the logarithmic curve....
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...This is surprising, decomposition for the recognition of inflected words (e.g., Clahsen, 1999; Rastle, Davis, & New, 2004; Taft, 2004)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

An amorphous model for morphological processing in visual comprehension based on naive discriminative learning.

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R. Harald Baayen¹, Petar Milin², Dušica Filipović Đurđević², Peter Hendrix¹, Marco Marelli³ - Show less +1 more•Institutions (3)

University of Alberta¹, University of Novi Sad², University of Milano-Bicocca³

01 Jul 2011-Psychological Review

TL;DR: A 2-layer symbolic network model based on the equilibrium equations of the Rescorla-Wagner model (Danks, 2003) is proposed, showing that for pseudo-derived words no special morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism is required and predicting that productive affixes afford faster response latencies for new words.

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Abstract: A 2-layer symbolic network model based on the equilibrium equations of the Rescorla-Wagner model (Danks, 2003) is proposed. The study first presents 2 experiments in Serbian, which reveal for sentential reading the inflectional paradigmatic effects previously observed by Milin, Filipovic Đurđevic, and Moscoso del Prado Martin (2009) for unprimed lexical decision. The empirical results are successfully modeled without having to assume separate representations for inflections or data structures such as inflectional paradigms. In the next step, the same naive discriminative learning approach is pitted against a wide range of effects documented in the morphological processing literature. Frequency effects for complex words as well as for phrases (Arnon & Snider, 2010) emerge in the model without the presence of whole-word or whole-phrase representations. Family size effects (Moscoso del Prado Martin, Bertram, Haikio, Schreuder, & Baayen, 2004; Schreuder & Baayen, 1997) emerge in the simulations across simple words, derived words, and compounds, without derived words or compounds being represented as such. It is shown that for pseudo-derived words no special morpho-orthographic segmentation mechanism, as posited by Rastle, Davis, and New (2004), is required. The model also replicates the finding of Plag and Baayen (2009) that, on average, words with more productive affixes elicit longer response latencies; at the same time, it predicts that productive affixes afford faster response latencies for new words. English phrasal paradigmatic effects modulating isolated word reading are reported and modeled, showing that the paradigmatic effects characterizing Serbian case inflection have crosslinguistic scope.

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392 citations

Cites background or methods from "Morphological decomposition and the..."

...Many studies have addressed the question of whether the parsing of a complex word into its constituents is an obligatory and automatic process (e.g., Taft & Forster, 1975; Taft, 2004; Rastle et al., 2004) and have investigated the consequences of such obligatory decomposition for words that are not morphologically complex (e....
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...…the question of whether the parsing of a complex word into its constituents is an obligatory and automatic process (e.g., Taft & Forster, 1975; Taft, 2004; Rastle et al., 2004) and have investigated the consequences of such obligatory decomposition for words that are not morphologically…...
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...According to the obligatory decomposition model of Taft (2004), constituents would mediate access to whole-word representations....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Shifting paradigms: gradient structure in morphology.

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Jennifer Hay¹, R. Harald Baayen²•Institutions (2)

University of Canterbury¹, Max Planck Society²

01 Jul 2005-Trends in Cognitive Sciences

TL;DR: A growing body of evidence is outlined, mostly external to the debate, indicating that morphological structure is indeed intrinsically graded, and by allowing probability into the grammar, progress can be made towards solving some long-standing puzzles in morphological theory.

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230 citations

Cites result from "Morphological decomposition and the..."

...These experimental results are in harmony with the more general view in memory research that any experience leaves a memory trace, and that, as phrased by Landauer ([30], p. 493), we should not be looking for models and mechanisms that produce storage economies, but rather models ‘in which marvels…...
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Journal Article•DOI•

Morphological Awareness in Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners: Within and Cross-Language Effects on Word Reading.

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Gloria Ramirez¹, Xi Chen¹, Esther Geva¹, Heidi Kiefer¹•Institutions (1)

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education¹

01 Mar 2010-Reading and Writing

TL;DR: This paper found that morphological awareness is important for word reading in Spanish, a shallow orthography with a complex morphological system, and that children's L1 is associated with their L2.

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Abstract: This study investigated within and cross-language effects of morphological awareness on word reading among Spanish-speaking children who were English Language Learners. Participants were 97 Spanish-speaking children in grade 4 and grade 7. Morphological awareness in Spanish and in English was evaluated with two measures of derivational morphology. The results showed that Spanish morphological awareness contributed unique variance to Spanish word reading after controlling for other reading related variables. English morphological awareness also explained unique variance in English word reading. Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness was observed from Spanish to English, but not from English to Spanish. These results suggest that morphological awareness is important for word reading in Spanish, a shallow orthography with a complex morphological system. They also suggest that morphological awareness developed in children’s L1 is associated with word reading in English, their L2.

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217 citations

Cites background from "Morphological decomposition and the..."

...The influence of morphological structure applies to both regular and irregular words, as evidenced in studies involving deep orthographies such as English (e.g., Taft, 2004 ) and shallow orthographies such as Spanish and Italian (see Dominguez et al., 2000 for a review)....
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...access (e.g. Alvarez et al., 2001; Caramazza et al., 1988; Taft, 2004 )....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Morphological decomposition in early visual word processing

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Catherine-Marie Longtin¹, Fanny Meunier¹•Institutions (1)

Centre national de la recherche scientifique¹

01 Jul 2005-Journal of Memory and Language

TL;DR: The authors used morphologically complex pseudowords as primes, consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suYxes, such as sportation, formed by the noun sport “sport” and the suYx -ation (-ation only attaches to verbs).

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197 citations

Cites background from "Morphological decomposition and the..."

...…that a word like jardinier is decomposed into jardin and -ier prior to the activation of its full lexical representation (Colé, Segui, & Taft, 1997; Taft, 1994, 2003, 2005); or supralexical, in which case it is only when the whole word representation of jardinier has been activated that the…...
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References

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Open Access

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Book•

Computational analysis of present-day American English

[...]

Henry Kučera, W. Nelson Francis, W. F. Twaddell, Mary Lois Marckworth, Laura M. Bell, John Bissell Carroll - Show less +2 more

01 Jan 1967

6,827 citations

"Morphological decomposition and the..." refers methods in this paper

...All frequencies were determined from the norms of Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971), with the matching confirmed on the basis of two other norms; Kuĉera and Francis (1967) and Baayen, Piepenbrock, and van Rijn (1993)....
[...]

Book•

The American heritage word frequency book

[...]

John B. Carroll, Peter Davies, Barry Richman

01 Jan 1971

1,303 citations

"Morphological decomposition and the..." refers background or methods in this paper

...These real word stems had an average frequency of 106 per million (according to Carroll et al., 1971), with a third being under 15 per million and a third being over 75 per million....
[...]
...All frequencies were determined from the norms of Carroll, Davies, and Richman (1971), with the matching confirmed on the basis of two other norms; Kuĉera and Francis (1967) and Baayen, Piepenbrock, and van Rijn (1993)....
[...]

Linguistic Data Consortium

[...]

Treebank Penn

01 Jan 1999

1,116 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Lexical storage and retrieval of prefixed words

[...]

Marcus Taft¹, Kenneth I. Forster¹•Institutions (1)

Monash University¹

01 Dec 1975-Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

TL;DR: This paper found that nonwords that are stems of prefixed words (e.g., juvenate ) take longer to classify than nonwords which are not stems (e., pertoire ), suggesting that the nonword stem is directly represented in the lexicon.

...read moreread less

949 citations

"Morphological decomposition and the..." refers background in this paper

...…bound morphemes are difficult to classify as nonwords both when presented in isolation (e.g., the vive of revive and survive: Taft, 1994; Taft & Forster, 1975) and when presented in combination with an inappropriate affix (e.g., invive: Taft & Forster, 1975; Taft, Hambly, & Kinoshita, 1986)....
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...…example, bound morphemes are difficult to classify as nonwords both when presented in isolation (e.g., the vive of revive and survive: Taft, 1994; Taft & Forster, 1975) and when presented in combination with an inappropriate affix (e.g., invive: Taft & Forster, 1975; Taft, Hambly, & Kinoshita,…...
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Journal Article•DOI•

Rules of language

[...]

Steven Pinker¹•Institutions (1)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology¹

02 Aug 1991-Science

TL;DR: Intensive study of one phenomenon of English grammar and how it is processed and acquired suggest that both theories of language and cognition are partly right.

...read moreread less

Abstract: Language and cognition have been explained as the products of a homogeneous associative memory structure or alternatively, of a set of genetically determined computational modules in which rules manipulate symbolic representations. Intensive study of one phenomenon of English grammar and how it is processed and acquired suggest that both theories are partly right. Regular verbs (walk-walked) are computed by a suffixation rule in a neural system for grammatical processing; irregular verbs (run-ran) are retrieved from an associative memory.

...read moreread less

901 citations