Testing the Stem Dominance Hypothesis: Meaning Analysis of Inflected Words and Prepositional Phrases

Minna Lehtonen, Gabor Harrer, Erling Wande, Matti Laine

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    3 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We tested the hypothesis that lexical-semantic access of inflected words is governed by the word stem. Object drawings overlaid with a dot/arrow marking position/movement were matched with corresponding linguistic expressions like "from the house". To test whether the stem dominates lexical-semantic access irrespective of its position, we used Swedish prepositional phrases (locative information via preposition immediately preceding the stem) or Finnish case-inflected words (locative information via suffix immediately following the stem). Both in monolingual Swedish and in bilingual Finnish-Swedish speakers, correct stems with incorrect prepositions/case-endings were hardest to reject. This finding supports the view that the stem is indeed the dominant unit in meaning access of inflected words.
    Original languageUndefined/Unknown
    Pages (from-to)
    Number of pages5
    JournalPLoS ONE
    Volume9
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

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