Derivational morphology approached with event-related potentials

Author： Bölte Jens Jansma Bernadette M. Zilverstand Anna Zwitserlood Pienie

Publisher： John Benjamins Publishing Company

E-ISSN： 1871-1375|4|3|336-353

ISSN： 1871-1340

Source： The Mental Lexicon, Vol.4, Iss.3, 2009-01, pp. : 336-353

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Abstract

We investigated the processing of derived adjectives in German using event-related potentials (ERPs). ERPs were registered to existing adjectives (freundlich, ‘friendly’), to morphologically complex pseudowords that were synonymous to an existing adjective and thus interpretable (*freundhaft), and to complex pseudowords that were structurally and semantically anomalous (*freundbar). Stimuli were embedded in sentence contexts, displayed word by word. An ERP effect with a left-frontal maximum was observed around 450–500 ms after stimulus onset. In this window, both pseudoword types differed from existing adjectives. We interpret this data pattern as a LAN, reflecting structural problems due to morphological parsing, a process that is distinct from semantic processing.