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We investigate the processing of inflected verbs in Bengali. The word forms involve an interaction of orthography andphonology: the 1st Person singular is formed from the 3rd Person by adding the suffix /-i/. For stem vowels [, e, , o]this causes the stem vowel to be raised. For [e, o] this is reflected orthographically, but not for [,]. We examine thisin a cross-modal priming study and an eye tracking task where an auditory first-syllable fragment is matched to eitherthe 1st or 3rd Person visual form. We show that orthography plays an important role, with mismatching forms beingless effective as primes, and fragment completion being easier for patterns with different orthography. For words withno orthographic difference, manual responses to fragment completion were at chance, but eye tracking revealed distinctmatch vs. mismatch processing. We discuss implications for roles of orthography and phonology in lexical access.

Scandinavian languages like Swedish employ tonal accent as a lexical phonological feature, where suprasegmentalinformation can be the sole factor differentiating between words. Using cross-modal semantic fragment priming we testedthe following: (a) Do monolingual speakers of Swedish use tonal accent information during lexical access? (b) Do bilingualspeakers, who grew up with one tonal (Swedish) and one non-tonal language, treat this feature the same way as monolinguals?Our results show that for monolinguals, accent mispronunciations eliminate priming effects, implying that tone is used duringlexical access. For bilinguals, by contrast, mispronunciation sensitivity depends on both the accent type and its distributionacross the linguistic input, as well as on the lexical neighbourhood.

On the evidence of four lexical-decision tasks in German, we examine speakers' sensitivity to internal morphological composition and abstract morphological rules during the processing of derived words, real and novel. In a lexical-decision task with delayed priming, speakers were presented with two-step derived nouns such as "Heilung healing" derived from the adjective "heil intact" via the verb "heilen to heal." These were compared with two sets of derived novel words, one with and the other without an intermediate verb; for example, "*Spitzung sharpening" from "spitz sharp via "spitzen sharpen" (Experiment 1) and "*Hübschung beautifying" from "hübsch pretty" via "*hübschen "beautify" (Experiment 2). The question was whether there would be a difference between the two types of novel words. Both sets were morphologically viable in terms of combinatory possibilities. Results indicated that extant and novel complex words activated their respective base forms; that is, "Heilung, *Spitzung, *Hübschung" all primed "heil, spitz, hübsch." Both sets of novel words were then combined in a third (delayed priming) experiment, where again they primed their bases, but were nevertheless significantly different from each other. Items with real words in the intermediate position ("*Spitzung") showed stronger priming effects. Controls that were only related in form or semantics did not prime; neither did structurally unviable pseudowords show priming. A final experiment (Experiment 4), comparing the two types of novel words ("*Spitzung" vs. "*Hübschung") in a simple lexical-decision task, also revealed significant differences across these sets, suggesting that the lexical status of the intermediate derivation affects the processing of novel forms.

The role of phonology in bilingual word recognition has focused on a phonemic level especially in the recognition of cognates. In this study, we examined differences in metrical structure to test whether first language (L1) metrical structure influences the processing of second language (L2) words. For that, we used words of Romance origin (e.g., reptile, signal), which both German and English have borrowed extensively. However, the existing metrical patterns are not identical nor are the borrowed vocabularies the same. Rather, those identical words differ systematically in their foot structure. We conducted a cross-modal form fragment priming EEG experiment (auditory–visual) with German native speakers who were highly proficient in English. Both behavioral and ERP results showed an effect of the native phonology and the loan status, that is, whether the loan exists only in the speaker's L2 or is shared across languages. Priming effects (RTs) were largest for nonshared loanwords indicating some interference from German (L1). This was also evident in a reduced N400 but only if the metrical structure aligned with German patterns for Germanic words, that is, two light syllables as in pigeon. If the words exist in both languages, metrical structure also mattered shown by the modulation of different ERP components across conditions. Overall, our study indicates that metrical phonology plays a role in loanword processing. Our data show that the more similar a word is in terms of its metrical phonology across L1 and L2, the more effortful the processing of a word within a priming paradigm indicating interference from the L1 phonology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a collection of contributions from historical linguists discussing the current state and future aims of diachronic linguistics. The authors highlight the use of Bayesian phylogenetic methods in linguistic phylogenetics and reconstruction, as well as the importance of interdisciplinary perspectives and incorporating insights from other fields. The document also explores the progress and challenges in diachronic generative syntax, the potential for collaboration between dialect geographers, sociolinguists, and historical linguists, and the use of parsed corpora and naturalistic data in studying diachronic syntax. Additionally, it discusses the role of experimental linguistics in evaluating phonetic and phonological plausibility. The text emphasizes the importance of typological observations, experimental work, and further research in understanding language change. [Extracted from the article]

The precise structure of speech sound representations is still a matter of debate. In the present neurobiological study, we compared predictions about differential sensitivity to speech contrasts between models that assume full specification of all phonological information in the mental lexicon with those assuming sparse representations (only contrastive or otherwise not predictable information is stored). In a passive oddball paradigm, we studied the contrast sensitivity as reflected in the mismatch negativity (MMN) response to changes in the manner of articulation, as well as place of articulation of consonants in intervocalic positions of nonwords (manner of articulation: [edi - eni], [ezi - eni]; place of articulation: [edi - egi]). Models that assume full specification of all phonological information in the mental lexicon posit equal MMNs within each contrast (symmetric MMNs), that is, changes from standard [edi] to deviant [eni] elicit a similar MMN response as changes from standard [eni] to deviant [edi]. In contrast, models that assume sparse representations predict that only the [ezi] - [eni] reversals will evoke symmetric MMNs because of their conflicting fully specified manner features. Asymmetric MMNs are predicted, however, for the reversals of [edi] - [eni] and [edi] - [egi] because either a manner or place property in each pair is not fully specified in the mental lexicon. Our results show a pattern of symmetric and asymmetric MMNs that is in line with predictions of the featurally underspecified lexicon model that assumes sparse phonological representations. We conclude that the brain refers to underspecified phonological representations during speech perception. (Contains 4 tables, 8 figures, and 2 footnotes.)

This study examines the role of abstractness during the activation of a lexical representation. Abstractness and conflict are directly modeled in our approach by invoking lexical representations in terms of contrastive phonological features. In two priming experiments with English nouns differing only in vowel height of their stem vowels (e.g., "pin" vs. "pan"), we compare a conflict versus non-conflict situation across English dialects. Based on differences in the vowel height representation, the conflict occurs in American English, but not in New Zealand English. The results show that there is a lack of priming in the conflict, but not in the non-conflict situation. This is taken as evidence for the claim that lexical access is sensitive to conflicts and non-conflicts between acoustic-phonetic and phonological information. We therefore conclude that discrete phonological features are crucial determiners for successful speech perception, which is in line with abstractionist approaches. (Contains 16 footnotes, 6 tables and 6 figures.)

Within linguistics, words with a complex internal structure are commonly assumed to be decomposed into their constituent morphemes (e.g., un-help-ful). Nevertheless, an ongoing debate concerns the brain structures that subserve this process. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study varied the internal complexity of derived words while keeping the external surface structure constant as well as controlling relevant parameters that could affect word recognition. This allowed us to tease apart brain activations specifically related to morphological processing from those related to possible confounds of perceptual cues like word length or affix type. Increased task-related activity in left inferior frontal, bilateral temporo-occipital and right parietal areas was specifically related to the processing of derivations with high complex internal structure relative to those with low complex internal structure. Our results show, that morphologically complex words are decomposed and that the brain processes the degree of internal complexity of word derivations. (Contains 2 figures and 2 tables.)

How does the mental lexicon cope with phonetic variants in recognition of spoken words? Using a lexical decision task with and without fragment priming, the authors compared the processing of German words and pseudowords that differed only in the place of articulation of the initial consonant (place). Across both experiments, event-related brain potentials indicated that pseudowords with initial noncoronal place (e.g., *Brachen) activate words with initial coronal place (e.g., Drachen [dragon]). In contrast, coronal pseudowords (e.g., *Drenze) do not as effectively activate noncoronal words (e.g., Grenze [border]). Thus, certain word onset variations do not hamper the speech recognition system. The authors interpret this asymmetry as a consequence of underspecified coronal place of articulation in the mental lexicon.