Brain responses to morphologically complex verbs: An electrophysiological study of Swedish regular and irregular past tense forms
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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.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Journal of Neurolinguistics |
Volume | 51 |
Pages (from-to) | 76-83 |
Number of pages | 8 |
ISSN | 0911-6044 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors
- Event-related potentials, Inflection, LAN, Left anterior negativity, Morphology, P600
Research areas
ID: 305546335