Compound headedness in the mental lexicon: an event-related potential study.

Publisher: Routledge Country of Publication: England NLM ID: 8411889 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1464-0627 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 02643294 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Cogn Neuropsychol Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: 2013- : London : Routledge
Original Publication: London ; Hillsdale, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, c1984-

Evoked Potentials* ; Language* ; Semantics* ; Vocabulary*; Brain/*physiology; Adult ; Electroencephalography ; Female ; Humans ; Italy ; Male ; Psycholinguistics

Compound words in Romance languages may have the head either in the initial or in the final position. In the present event-related potential (ERP) study, we address the hypothesis that Italian compounds are processed differently according to their head position and that this is mostly due to the perceived change in the canonical order of syntactic elements. Compound stimuli (head-initial, head-final, or exocentric) were visually displayed in two presentation modes, as whole words or separated into their constituents, in the context of a lexical decision task. Behavioural results showed an increased split cost in head-final and exocentric compounds as compared to head-initial compounds. ERP results showed an enhanced left anterior negativity (LAN) for head-final and exocentric compounds as compared to head-initial compounds, regardless of the presentation mode. Results suggest that the analogy with syntactic order may influence the internal structure of a compound and, as a consequence, its processing, but other characteristics (such as the grammatical properties of constituents) may affect the processing itself.

Keywords: Compound headedness.; Compound words; Electroencephalogram; Event-related potential; Morphology

Date Created: 20131031 Date Completed: 20140630 Latest Revision: 20181202

20231215

10.1080/02643294.2013.847076

24168167