Does word structure morphology influence sentence structure syntax during language comprehension

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Does word structure (morphology) influence
sentence structure (syntax) during language
comprehension?

• Lets think about regular vs. irregular
  past-tense verbs (e.g., WALKED vs. GAVE)

For the irregular verb, all the information is
contained in a single morpheme
For the regular verb, information is split up
into two morphemes
VP
VP
V
V
GAVE
WALK ED
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Regular Past Tense WALKED
When the sentence processor encounters a regular
past-tense verb (walked) it can access
information from the stem (walk) and the suffix
(-ed) in a sequential, piecemeal fashion.
Conceptual Level
S
Syntactic Level
NP
VP
det
N
V
Incoming words
The man walk-ed
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Irregular Past Tense GAVE
For irregular past tense verbs, on the other
hand, the sentence processor has to deal with
both types of information simultaneously.
Conceptual Level
S
Syntactic Level
NP
VP
det
N
V
Incoming words
The man gave
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Does the sentence processor take advantage of the
sequential, smaller-sized packages of information
that regular past-tense verbs provide?
Allen, Badecker, Osterhout (2003) used ERPs to
find out.
ERP components in response to a typical word

• N400 Amplitude is higher for words that are less
  frequent or that dont fit in the sentence
  context very well.
• P600 Amplitude is higher for words that violate
  syntactic rules, including proper tense
  inflections.

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N400
N1
John ate a banana
- 3mv
John ate an avocado
P2
Avocado is a lower frequency word than banana
N1
- 3mv
John ate a banana
John ate a bananas
P2
Bananas has an inappropriate inflection
P600
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The amplitude of the N400 is known to vary as a
function of word frequency.
Response to low-frequency word The man will
clean the truck.
Response to high-frequency word The man will
move the truck.
Does the P600 also vary with word frequency?
Does the frequency of the word that has a wrong
morpheme matter?
Violation on low-frequency word The man will
cleaned the truck.
?
Violation on high-frequency word The man
will moved the truck.
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Differences between regular and irregular verbs
Regular Verb WALK-ED The feature past is
marked by a single, identifiable morpheme (-ed)
Irregular Verb BOUGHT The feature past is
not marked by any single, identifiable morpheme
Experimental Design Compare ERPs to verbs in
sentences across the following conditions 1-
Regular vs. Irregular 2- High Frequency vs. Low
Frequency 3- Grammatical vs. Ungrammatical (tense
violations)
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Regular High-Frequency Grammatical The
man will move the car. Ungrammatical The
man will moved the car. Low-Frequency
Grammatical The man will clean the car.
Ungrammatical The man will cleaned the
car. Irregular High-Frequency
Grammatical The man will buy the car.
Ungrammatical The man will bought the car.
Low-Frequency Grammatical The man will hide
the truck Ungrammatical The man will hid
the truck
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(No Transcript)
10
(No Transcript)
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Experiment 3 High Frequency Regular vs.
Irregular (n 17)
HF will move
HF will buy
HF will moved
HF will bought
Although moved is just as frequent as bought,
the P600 doesnt begin responding to the
incorrect -ed until after the N400 system is
finished processing the meaning of the stem
move. Why does it wait? Because it can.