Morphological activation in sentence context: when the root prevails over the meaning

Abstract

Two experiments explore the extent of morphological root-based spreading activation in adult skilled readers of Hebrew. Participants performed semantic judgements on sentences in Hebrew, half of which included sentence-final incongruent targets. Critical targets were morphologically related but semantically unrelated to an expected but non-presented congruent sentence completion, and control items had no such morphological relation. Participants were slower and more error-prone in correctly rejecting critical targets than controls, due to the morphological relation with the congruent completion. These results demonstrate that prediction-based lexical activation in the absence of form exposure can support morphologically based spreading activation in Hebrew. Furthermore, semantic constraints do not completely eliminate activation of morphologically related but semantically incongruous lexical candidates, similar to patterns found for ambiguous lexical items in other languages. Taken together, these results support and extend the central role of the morphological root in shaping lexical organisation and dynamics of lexical access in Hebrew.

Keywords:

• morphology
• semantic
• ambiguity
• context

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Tamar Degani, Sami Boudelaa and an anonymous reviewer for comments on the manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by EU-FP7 [grant IRG-249163] to AP.

Notes

1. Mean frequency was 27.5 (SD = 57, median = 4) for morphologically related and 12.7 (SD = 28, median = 2.5) for morphologically unrelated items.

2. Mean frequency was 23.6 (SD = 49, median = 4) for morphologically related and 13.3 (SD = 26, median = 2.5) for morphologically unrelated targets.

Additional information

Funding

Funding: This research was supported by EU-FP7 [grant IRG-249163] to AP.