The processing of singular and plural nouns in English, French, and Dutch : new insights from megastudies

In this study, we explored the processing of singular and plural word forms, using megastudies in French, English, and Dutch. For singulars, we observed a base frequency effect but no surface frequency effect. For plurals, the effect depended on the frequency of the word form. When the word form had a frequency above a threshold value, we observed both surface and base frequency effects; for the frequencies below the threshold, we found a base frequency effect only, suggesting full decomposition for these words. The threshold differed between the languages, suggesting that more plurals are dec... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Gimenes, Manuel
Brysbaert, Marc
New, Boris
Dokumenttyp: journalarticle
Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
Schlagwörter: VISUAL WORD RECOGNITION / MORPHO-ORTHOGRAPHIC SEGMENTATION / LEXICAL DECISION DATA / MORPHOLOGICAL DECOMPOSITION / INFLECTIONAL MORPHOLOGY / FILM SUBTITLES / PROJECT / FREQUENCIES / DATABASE / morphology / plural / megastudy
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27450805
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8502859

In this study, we explored the processing of singular and plural word forms, using megastudies in French, English, and Dutch. For singulars, we observed a base frequency effect but no surface frequency effect. For plurals, the effect depended on the frequency of the word form. When the word form had a frequency above a threshold value, we observed both surface and base frequency effects; for the frequencies below the threshold, we found a base frequency effect only, suggesting full decomposition for these words. The threshold differed between the languages, suggesting that more plurals are decomposed in French than in Dutch and more in Dutch than in English. In contrast, for all languages the singular form seems to be coactivated whenever the plural form is processed. These results are interpreted in light of some of the main models of morphological processing.