The cognitive reality of morphomes. Evidence from Italian

Bibliographic Data

ID4580992
AuthorsChiara Cappellaro (0000-0002-6395-611X, University of Oxford, corresponding author), Nina Dumrukcic (0000-0001-5946-3673, University of Cologne), Isabella Fritz (0000-0002-4374-3272, University of Oxford), Francesca Franzon (0000-0003-0503-2792, Universitat Pompeu Fabra), Martin Maiden (0000-0001-6321-5138, University of Oxford)
Year2024
Volume34
Issue1
Pages33-71
Publication date2024-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMorphology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1871-5621 • E-ISSN: 1871-5656
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s11525-023-09419-2
OpenAlexW4390395086
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited32

This study reports and discusses the results of a pilot psycholinguistic investigation into the morphome - a term created (Aronoff 1994) to indicate systematic relations between form and meaning in morphology which lack synchronic semantic, functional, or phonological determinants and are thereby purely morphological.Despite a general consensus (cf. Bermúdez-Otero and Luís 2016) on the need to approach the question of the existence and nature of morphomic structures experimentally and interdisciplinarily, there has been no study beyond Nevins, Rodrigues, and Tang (2015), which focused on the morphomic structure in Romance verb morphology identified by Maiden (1992) and labelled (arbitrarily) the 'L-pattern' and concluded that in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese this structure is no longer part of native speakers' grammar.The present study has replicated, for Italian, the basic experimental design of Nevins et al. It has obtained behavioural measurements (from two experiments) including eyetracking measures (from one experiment). All these measurements converge in showing (i) a statistically significant preference for target items that are consistent with the L-/U-pattern distribution and (ii) a faster decision-making process when the L-item was chosen. We conclude that (pace Nevins et al.) this morphomic structure is part of the internalized grammar of Italian adult speakers

Contrast (vision · Grammar · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Noun · Preference · Romance languages · Categorization, perception, and language · Computer Science · Mathematics · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence