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Updated: Dec 29, 2025

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
Published on: September 5, 2019
Pause acceptability indicates word-internal structure in Wubuy
Rikke L Bundgaard-Nielsen1, Brett J Baker2
1MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Bankstown Campus, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia; School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Callaghan 2308, New South Wales, Australia.
Abstract:
Words in polysynthetic languages, such as the Australian language Wubuy, can be semantically complex and translate into whole phrases in analytic languages such as English. This raises questions about whether such words are like words in English, or whether they are more like phrases. In the following, we examine Wubuy speakers' knowledge of word-internal morphological complexity in a word-preference task, in which we test the acceptability of complex words into which artificial pauses have been embedded at a range of morphological junctures. The results show that participants prefer unmodified words and words with pauses inserted at semantically transparent morphological junctures over words with pauses at other junctures. There is no preference for unmodified words over words with pauses at transparent junctures. These results suggest that speakers have access to some word-internal morphological information, and that complex words may share characteristics of both words and phrases in, for instance, English.
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