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In the present study, we looked at cross-modal priming effects produced by auditory presentation of morphologically complex pseudowords in order to investigate semantic integration during the processing of French morphologically complex items. In Experiment 1, we used as primes pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as "sportation," formed by the noun "sport" "sport" and the suffix "-ation." In Experiment 2, primes were semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the combination of a root and a suffix, such as "rapidifier" "to quickify." In Experiment 3, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords that were designed to be synonymous with existing derived words, for example "cuisineur," which, if it existed, would mean the same as "cuisinier" "a cook." Finally, in Experiment 4, we used as primes non-morphological pseudowords like "rapiduit," "-uit" being an existing ending of French but not a suffix. The results of the four experiments show that priming only occurs with those morphologically complex pseudowords which are interpretable (including those which are synonymous with a pre-existing derived form), providing evidence that semantic factors are taken into account when the prime is overtly presented. Our results further support the view that morphological effects come into play at at least two processing stages, a morphological decomposition based on formal properties and a semantic integration based on semantic compatibility between morphemes.

We study the ability of children to provide an appropriate continuation for a stimulus sentence, taking into account the joint demands of situational aspect and grammatical aspect. We hypothesize that the aspectual transitions required by some aspectual combinations play a role in the difficulty of providing an appropriate continuation for them. We tested 130 French-speaking children of 5;06 to 9;0. In general, the data are consistent with the idea that the ability of children to construe an appropriate continuation for a stimulus clause is a function of both the situational aspect of the clause and the grammatical aspect provided by the verbal morpheme. There is a significant tensexsituational aspect interaction in the number of continuations that children are able to provide in answer to the stimuli. Contrary to our expectations, there is no significant tensexsituational aspect in the number of appropriate continuations, this being perhaps due to the small number of continuations for each stimulus type, but there are trends in the expected direction, which further studies may be able to confirm.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.11.005 Byline: Fanny Meunier (a), Catherine-Marie Longtin (b) Keywords: Morphology; Visual word processing; Cross-modal priming; Pseudowords Abstract: In the present study, we looked at cross-modal priming effects produced by auditory presentation of morphologically complex pseudowords in order to investigate semantic integration during the processing of French morphologically complex items. In Experiment 1, we used as primes pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as [degrees]sportation, formed by the noun sport 'sport' and the suffix -ation. In Experiment 2, primes were semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the combination of a root and a suffix, such as [degrees]rapidifier 'to quickify'. In Experiment 3, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords that were designed to be synonymous with existing derived words, for example [degrees]cuisineur, which, if it existed, would mean the same as cuisinier 'a cook'. Finally, in Experiment 4, we used as primes non-morphological pseudowords like [degrees]rapiduit, -uit being an existing ending of French but not a suffix. The results of the four experiments show that priming only occurs with those morphologically complex pseudowords which are interpretable (including those which are synonymous with a pre-existing derived form), providing evidence that semantic factors are taken into account when the prime is overtly presented. Our results further support the view that morphological effects come into play at at least two processing stages, a morphological decomposition based on formal properties and a semantic integration based on semantic compatibility between morphemes. Author Affiliation: (a) Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Louis Lumiere, France (b) School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, Canada Article History: Received 5 April 2006; Revised 6 September 2006 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and by a research grant 'Action concertee jeunes chercheurs' from the Ministere de la recherche et de l'enseignement (France) accorded to the first author. Second author was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fonds Quebecois pour la recherche sur la societe et la culture. This project also benefited support from a Major Collaborative Research Initiative Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (# 412-2001-1009). The second author is now a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit of the Medical Research Council, Cambridge, United Kingdom. We thank D. Fabre for her help in recording the auditory primes. We are also grateful to M. Davis, K. Forster, H. Giraudo, G. Powell, K. Rastle, and J. Segui for their help and comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.02.008 Byline: Catherine-Marie Longtin (a), Fanny Meunier (b) Abstract: In this study, we looked at priming effects produced by a short presentation (47ms) of morphologically complex pseudowords in French. In Experiment 1, we used as primes semantically interpretable pseudowords made of the grammatical combination of a root and a suffix, such as rapidifier 'to quickify.' In Experiment 2, we used non-morphological pseudowords such as rapiduit, where -uit is an existing ending in French, but is not a suffix. In Experiment 3, primes were pseudowords consisting of a non-interpretable combination of roots and suffixes, such as sportation, formed by the noun sport 'sport' and the suffix -ation (-ation only attaches to verbs). Results of Experiment 1 show that morphologically complex pseudowords significantly facilitated the recognition of their roots. This priming effect was equivalent to the facilitation obtained when existing derived words were used as primes. In Experiment 2, no priming effect was obtained with non-morphological pseudowords, demonstrating that the mere occurrence of the target at the beginning of the pseudoword prime is not sufficient to produce any priming and that an orthographic account of the results is not viable. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that the semantic interpretability of the morphologically complex pseudowords does not affect priming, as facilitation effect is obtained with morphologically complex non-interpretable pseudowords. The results reveal an early morphological decomposition triggered by the morphological structure of the prime, but insensitive to its lexicality or interpretability. Author Affiliation: (a) Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Rene Descartes, France (b) Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Universite Louis Lumiere, France Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported by a doctoral fellowship to the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. It was also supported by a research grant 'Action concertee jeunes chercheurs' from the Ministere de la recherche et de l'enseignement (France) accorded to the second author. The first author is now a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). We are grateful to J. Segui and P. Halle for their comments and suggestions at various stages of this research. We thank C. Burani, M. Lange, M. Taft, A. Idrissi, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. N. Azevedo, M. Corley, and J. Peters were also of great help in revising the manuscript.