Morphology: experiments Oct 6, 2008

Typical questions asked in morphology and experiments 1.How are certain morphemes related? 2.Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words? (is there a “morpheme” place in the brain)? 3.Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes? 4.How do we learn morphemes in other languages (and which are the hardest and why)?

Typical questions asked in morphology and experiments 1.How are certain morphemes related? (lexical decision tasks) 2.Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words? (is there a “morpheme” place in the brain)? (aphasia) 3.Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes? (brain imaging) 4.How do we learn morphemes in other languages (and which are the hardest and why)? (grammaticality judgment tasks, morpheme order studies)

Lexical Decision Task comma tubes have acid govern employ jubbing bribe leckom tubes trade government command acidic kepter flup employer allowing broth leckom tribe flupper swap rejont allow brother gave

1. How are certain morphemes related? How are these words related? 1-nurse/doctor, pillar/column, tree/leaf 2-leave/leaf, burn/urn/ though/through, red/bread 3-teach/taught, speak/speaker, goat/goats, ox/oxen How are these words related? A-serenity/serene, water/watering, proof/prove, read/reread B-receive/deceive, transmit/remit C-transmit/transmission, redeem/redemption, fall/fell electric/electricity, ten/tithe, brother/bretheren, child/children D-teach/teacher, friend/friendly, walk/walked E-go/went, good/best, am/is

types of priming A-real word repetition priming (tubes) B-non-word repetition priming (leckom) C-semantic priming (trade/swap; sea/ocean; mouse/cheese) D-orthographic priming (tribe/bribe, gave/have) E-morphological priming (govern/government; sing/sang; walk/walking) F-non-word morphological priming (flup/flupper),

types of morphological form Transparent: govern/government Opaque: arch/archer, court/courteous Form: again/against, broth/brother

Results (Rastle et al., 2004)

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words? Aphasia: Local trauma to one area of the brain that affects language processing

Lobes of the Brain 1.Frontal Lobe – –personality, planning, emotion, problem solving –motor cortex - movement –Broca’s area – speech production 2.Parietal Lobe – somatosensory perception integration of visual, auditory & somatospatial information 3.Temporal Lobe – hearing –Inferotemporal Cortex – object recognition –Wernicke’s area – language comprehension 4.Occipital Lobe - vision How do each one of these relate to language learning?

Wernicke’s aphasia Damage to the brain in the parietal/temporal region in the left hemisphere

Karl Wernicke discovered Wernicke’s area in 1873 Examiner: What kind of work have you done? Patient: We, the kids, all of us, and I, we were working for a long time in the... you know... it's the kind of space, I mean place rear to the spedawn... Examiner: Excuse me, but I wanted to know what work you have been doing. Patient: If you had said that, we had said that, poomer, near the fortunate, porpunate, tamppoo, all around the fourth of martz. Oh, I get all confused.

Broca’s aphasia Damage to left hemisphere, where the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes meet

Paul Broca discovered Broca’s area in 1861 –"Yes... Monday... Dad, and Dad... hospital, and... Wednesday, Wednesday, nine o'clock and... Thursday, ten o'clock... doctors, two, two... doctors and... teeth, yah. And a doctor... girl, and gums, and I." – –"Me... build-ing... chairs, no, no cab-in-ets. One, saw... then, cutting wood... working..."

2. Do we store mono-morphemic words differently than poly-morphemic words?

3. Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes? Spatiotemporal Maps of English Verb Inflection (Dhoud et al., 2003) Looked at what parts of the brain are activated when processing the regular and irregular past tense

3. Are irregular morphemes stored differently than regular morphemes? Brighter areas indicate higher activity levels During hearing words, for example, auditory cortex and Wernicke’s area are most active

Lexical decision task bigtlaskjumpjumpedbreadbutterrunrantalkedtalk

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1 st and 2 nd languages (which are the hardest & why)? Brown (1973) found a consistent order of acquisition for 14 grammatical morphemes in L1English; rates of acquisition varied : 1.Present progressive 2.In/on 3.Plural -s 4.Irregular past 5.Possessive ‘s 6.Uncontractibe copula 7.Articles 8.Regular past 9.Third person regular 10.Third person irregular/Auxilliary be

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1 st and 2 nd languages (which are the hardest & why)? Repeated with L2 learners (Dulay and Burt (1974) Point to the mice. Ask: “What are these?” Ask: “What happened to the cup?”

Bilingual syntax measure How many birds are there? Why is the man so fat? What is the skinny man doing?

Dulay and Burt (1974) 4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)?

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)? Dulay and Burt (1974)

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)? *Dulay and Burt (1974) ** Bailey et al. (1974)

4. How do we learn morphemes in 1st and 2nd languages (which are the hardest & why)? This order of acquisition didn’t reflect their frequency in parents’ speech. Possible explanations? –Perceptual saliency –Syllabicity –Lack of exceptions