TY  - JOUR
A1  - Farhy, Yael
A1  - Verissimo, Joao Marques
T1  - Semantic Effects in Morphological Priming: The Case of Hebrew Stems
JF  - Language and speech
N2  - To what extent is morphological representation in different languages dependent on semantic information? Unlike Indo-European languages, the Semitic mental lexicon has been argued to be purely "morphologically driven", with complex stems represented in a decomposed format (root + vowel pattern) irrespectively of their semantic properties. We have examined this claim by comparing cross-modal root-priming effects elicited by Hebrew verbs of a productive, open-ended class (Piel) and verbs of a closed-class (Paal). Morphological priming effects were obtained for both verb types, but prime-target semantic relatedness interacted with class, and only modulated responses following Paal, but not Piel primes. We explain these results by postulating different types of morpho-lexical representation for the different classes: structured stems, in the case of Piel, and whole-stems (which lack internal morphological structure), in the case of Paal. We conclude that semantic effects in morphological priming are also obtained in Semitic languages, but they are crucially dependent on type of morpho-lexical representation.
KW  - Morphology
KW  - priming
KW  - Semitic
KW  - semantic transparency
KW  - stems
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830918811863
SN  - 0023-8309
SN  - 1756-6053
VL  - 62
IS  - 4
SP  - 737
EP  - 750
PB  - Sage Publ.
CY  - London
ER  -