{"title":"The cognitive reality of morphomes. Evidence from Italian","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s11525-023-09419-2","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>This study reports and discusses the results of a pilot psycholinguistic investigation into the <em>morphome</em> – a term created (Aronoff <span>1994</span>) to indicate systematic relations between form and meaning in morphology which lack synchronic semantic, functional, or phonological determinants and are thereby purely morphological.</p> <p>Despite a general consensus (cf. Bermúdez-Otero and Luís <span>2016</span>) on the need to approach the question of the existence and nature of morphomic structures experimentally and interdisciplinarily, there has been no study beyond Nevins, Rodrigues, and Tang (<span>2015</span>), which focused on the morphomic structure in Romance verb morphology identified by Maiden (<span>1992</span>) and labelled (arbitrarily) the ‘L-pattern’ and concluded that in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese this structure is no longer part of native speakers’ grammar.</p> <p>The present study has replicated, for Italian, the basic experimental design of Nevins <em>et al</em>. It has obtained behavioural measurements (from two experiments) including eyetracking measures (from one experiment). All these measurements converge in showing (i) a statistically significant preference for target items that are consistent with the L-/U-pattern distribution and (ii) a faster decision-making process when the L-item was chosen. We conclude that (<em>pace</em> Nevins <em>et al</em>.) this morphomic structure is part of the internalized grammar of Italian adult speakers.</p>","PeriodicalId":51849,"journal":{"name":"Morphology","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Morphology","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-023-09419-2","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study reports and discusses the results of a pilot psycholinguistic investigation into the morphome – a term created (Aronoff 1994) to indicate systematic relations between form and meaning in morphology which lack synchronic semantic, functional, or phonological determinants and are thereby purely morphological.
Despite a general consensus (cf. Bermúdez-Otero and Luís 2016) on the need to approach the question of the existence and nature of morphomic structures experimentally and interdisciplinarily, there has been no study beyond Nevins, Rodrigues, and Tang (2015), which focused on the morphomic structure in Romance verb morphology identified by Maiden (1992) and labelled (arbitrarily) the ‘L-pattern’ and concluded that in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese this structure is no longer part of native speakers’ grammar.
The present study has replicated, for Italian, the basic experimental design of Nevins et al. It has obtained behavioural measurements (from two experiments) including eyetracking measures (from one experiment). All these measurements converge in showing (i) a statistically significant preference for target items that are consistent with the L-/U-pattern distribution and (ii) a faster decision-making process when the L-item was chosen. We conclude that (pace Nevins et al.) this morphomic structure is part of the internalized grammar of Italian adult speakers.
期刊介绍：
Aim The aim of Morphology is to publish high quality articles that contribute to the further articulation of morphological theory and linguistic theory in general, or present new and unexplored data. Relevant empirical evidence for the theoretical claims in the articles will be provided by in-depth analyses of specific languages or by comparative, cross-linguistic analyses of the relevant facts. The sources of data can be grammatical descriptions, corpora of data concerning language use and other naturalistic data, and experiments. Scope Morphology publishes articles on morphology proper, as well as articles on the interaction of morphology with phonology, syntax, and semantics, the acquisition and processing of morphological information, the nature of the mental lexicon, and morphological variation and change. Its main focus is on formal models of morphological knowledge, morphological typology (the range and limits of variation in natural languages), the position of morphology in the architecture of the human language faculty, and the evolution and change of language. In addition, the journal deals with the acquisition of morphological knowledge and its role in language processing. Articles on computational morphology and neurolinguistic approaches to morphology are also welcome. The first volume of Morphology appeared as Volume 16 (2006). Previous volumes were published under the title Yearbook of Morphology.
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