When morphological structure overrides meaning: evidence from German prefix and particle verbs

ABSTRACT

A key question in the study of lexical processing has been whether the semantic transparency of multimorphemic words affects processing. Previous studies of English and French prefixed words have found that words with greater semantic transparency show greater morphological constituent activation. Studies of German, however, have shown constituent activation that is unaffected by semantic transparency. We report two cross-modal priming experiments that examined the underlying causes of this between-language difference. Experiment 1 investigated German particle verbs, in which the particle can be separated from the verb stem. Experiment 2 investigated prefix verbs, which (as in English and French) cannot be separated from the verb stem. Results showed that semantically transparent and opaque prefix and particle verbs induced equivalent priming relative to form controls. This indicates structured representations for all categories. We discuss these findings in relation to a language user’s experience with the particular properties of word types.

KEYWORDS:

• Morphological priming
• lexical representation
• semantic transparency
• cross-modal priming
• complex verbs

Acknowledgement

This study was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, Grant FP 561/11, awarded to Eva Smolka. We would also like to acknowledge the support of the Partnership Program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We would like to thank Martin Peters, Katharina Korecky-Kroell, and Veronika Mattes for helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Eva Smolka http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6483-1186

Notes

1. In the following, we differentiate between “prefix verbs” (prefix + verb) and “particle verbs” (particle + verb) and refer to both types under the headings “prefixed verbs” or “complex verbs”.

2. There are some particles, such as über, unter, um, that may function as prefixes in complex verbs, such as übersetzen (“translate”), unterhalten (“entertain”), umfahren (“drive around”).

3. In fact, there is good evidence (Hajnal, 2004; Watkins, 1963) that Proto-Indo-European had only particle verbs, where morphological and syntactic elements could be inserted between the particle (commonly called “preverb”) and the following verb stem. Prefix verbs arose only later due to univerbation (coalescence) of the preverb with the verb stem, that is, via the transformation of a preverb into a prefix. Traces of the earlier particle construction have survived in several Indo-European languages and have been reinvigorated in the German particle verb constructions, where adverbs and prepositions have been partially transformed into verb particles.

4. Our assumption that processing strategies depend on language typology could be examined by extending our experiments to other similar Indo-European languages: Priming experiments in Dutch should show similar results because Dutch has productive verb prefixation and particle verb formation that is very close to that of German. The structure of Lithuanian complex verbs is more distant to German because there is no particle verb formation. On other hand, verb prefixation is very productive, and elements can be inserted between a prefix and the verb stem, and sometimes (e.g. in positive answers) prefixes occur without their verb stem. In Slavic languages, verb prefixation is still more distant from German, but is even more productive and relevant for syntax.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Volkswagen Foundation [grant number FP 561/11], awarded to Eva Smolka and by the Partnership grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.