1. Brain responses to morphologically complex verbs: An electrophysiological study of Swedish regular and irregular past tense forms.
- Author
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Schremm, Andrea, Novén, Mikael, Horne, Merle, and Roll, Mikael
- Subjects
- *
VERBS , *BRAIN , *INFLECTION (Grammar) , *VOCABULARY , *LANGUAGE & languages - Abstract
The present electrophysiological study investigated irregular versus regular verb form processing in Swedish during reading. In line with previous results from other languages, overregularized verbs, i.e. incorrect irregular stem + regular past tense suffix combinations (e.g. * stjäl + de 'steal + past tense'), elicited a left-lateralized negativity (LAN) relative to correct irregulars (stal 'stole'), suggesting rule-based decomposition of regularly inflected words. Lack of a similar effect for misapplication of the irregular stem formation pattern on regular verbs (e.g. * löft 'lifted' instead of lyfte) suggests the involvement of different processing mechanisms, possibly whole word access, for irregular items, at least to some degree. A P600 showing reprocessing was seen for all incorrect forms. The results add cross-linguistic support for morphological decomposition in the verbal inflection of a language where results from previous neurolinguistic studies of nominal inflection have only suggested the use of full-form access to words. • ERPs of both overregularized and irregularized verbs in Swedish were recorded. • LAN obtained for overregularized verbs suggests rule-based decomposition. • Irregularized verbs elicited only a P600 relative to the correct variant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2019
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