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Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their non-concatenative morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs. Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages.
In this article we discuss methods for investigating grammatical processing in bilinguals. We will present a methodological approach that relies on: (i) linguistic theory (in our case, morphology) for the construction of experimental materials; (ii) a design that allows for direct (within-experiment, within-participant, and within-item) comparisons of the critical conditions; and (iii) data analysis techniques that make both linear and non-linear gradient effects visible. We review recent studies of masked morphological priming in bilinguals in which the application of these methodological principles revealed highly selective interactions of age of acquisition (and the native/non-native contrast) with the linguistic distinction between inflection and derivation. We believe that such considerations are not only relevant for grammatical processing experiments, but also for studying bilingualism, and its potential cognitive advantages, more generally.
The Gradient Symbolic Computation (GSC) model presented in the keynote article (Goldrick, Putnam & Schwarz) constitutes a significant theoretical development, not only as a model of bilingual code-mixing, but also as a general framework that brings together symbolic grammars and graded representations. The authors are to be commended for successfully integrating a theory of grammatical knowledge with the voluminous research on lexical co-activation in bilinguals. It is, however, unfortunate that a certain conception of bilingualism was inherited from this latter research tradition, one in which the contrast between native and non-native language takes a back seat.
Do properties of individual languages shape the mechanisms by which they are processed? By virtue of their nonconcatenative
morphological structure, the recognition of complex words in Semitic languages has been argued to rely
strongly on morphological information and on decomposition into root and pattern constituents. Here, we report results
from a masked priming experiment in Hebrew in which we contrasted verb forms belonging to two morphological
classes, Paal and Piel, which display similar properties, but crucially differ on whether they are extended to novel verbs.
Verbs from the open-class Piel elicited familiar root priming effects, but verbs from the closed-class Paal did not. Our
findings indicate that, similarly to other (e.g., Indo-European) languages, down-to-the-root decomposition in Hebrew
does not apply to stems of non-productive verbal classes. We conclude that the Semitic word processor is less unique
than previously thought: Although it operates on morphological units that are combined in a non-linear way, it engages
the same universal mechanisms of storage and computation as those seen in other languages.
The Gradient Symbolic Computation (GSC) model presented in the keynote article (Goldrick, Putnam & Schwarz) constitutes a significant theoretical development, not only as a model of bilingual code-mixing, but also as a general framework that brings together symbolic grammars and graded representations. The authors are to be commended for successfully integrating a theory of grammatical knowledge with the voluminous research on lexical co-activation in bilinguals. It is, however, unfortunate that a certain conception of bilingualism was inherited from this latter research tradition, one in which the contrast between native and non-native language takes a back seat.