Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Morphological priming in the German mental lexicon.

I Sonnenstuhl1, S Eisenbeiss, H Clahsen

  • 1Department of Linguistics, University of Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany.

Cognition
|October 16, 1999
PubMed
Summary

Regularly inflected German words show full priming effects in cross-modal experiments, while irregular word forms exhibit partial priming. This finding contrasts regular and irregular inflection processing.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Histomorphological studies of the distal internal thoracic artery which support its use for coronary artery bypass grafting.

Atherosclerosis·2001
Same author

Lexical entries and rules of language: a multidisciplinary study of German inflection.

The Behavioral and brain sciences·2001
Same author

Event-related brain responses to morphological violations in Catalan.

Brain research. Cognitive brain research·2001
Same author

Brain potentials in the processing of complex sentences: an ERP study of control and raising constructions.

Journal of psycholinguistic research·2000
Same author

Syntax and morphology in Williams syndrome.

Cognition·1998
Same author

Decomposition of morphologically complex words in English: evidence from event-related brain potentials.

Brain research. Cognitive brain research·1998

Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Cognitive Science
  • Linguistics

Background:

  • Inflectional morphology is crucial for word meaning and grammatical function.
  • Understanding how the brain processes regular versus irregular word forms is key to modeling language acquisition and processing.
  • Cross-modal priming offers insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying word recognition.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate priming effects in German participles and noun plurals.
  • To compare the processing of regularly and irregularly inflected word forms.
  • To evaluate theoretical models of inflectional morphology.

Main Methods:

  • Cross-modal priming experiments were conducted using German participles and noun plurals.
  • Participants performed lexical decision tasks on visually presented word forms after auditory primes.
  • Reaction times were measured and compared across different conditions (regular vs. irregular, priming vs. control).

Main Results:

  • Regularly inflected German words (-t participles, -s plurals) showed full priming, with reaction times similar to identical prime-target pairs.
  • Irregularly inflected German words (-n participles, -er plurals) exhibited partial priming, resulting in longer reaction times compared to identical prime-target pairs.
  • Clear priming differences were observed between regular and irregular inflectional systems in German.

Conclusions:

  • German regularly inflected words are processed differently from irregularly inflected words.
  • Findings support the comparison with English and Italian inflectional systems.
  • Results have implications for single versus dual-mechanism models of inflectional processing.

Related Experiment Videos