1. The time-course of morphological constraints: Evidence from eye-movements during reading
- Author
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Cunnings, Ian and Clahsen, Harald
- Subjects
- *
LEXICAL grammar , *COMPARATIVE linguistics , *SEMANTICS , *NOUNS - Abstract
Abstract: Lexical compounds in English are constrained in that the non-head noun can be an irregular but not a regular plural (e.g. mice eater vs. *rats eater), a contrast that has been argued to derive from a morphological constraint on modifiers inside compounds. In addition, bare nouns are preferred over plural forms inside compounds (e.g. mouse eater vs. mice eater), a contrast that has been ascribed to the semantics of compounds. Measuring eye-movements during reading, this study examined how morphological and semantic information become available over time during the processing of a compound. We found that the morphological constraint affected both early and late eye-movement measures, whereas the semantic constraint for singular non-heads only affected late measures of processing. These results indicate that morphological information becomes available earlier than semantic information during the processing of compounds. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2007
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