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Brain responses to morphologically complex verbs : An electrophysiological study of Swedish regular and irregular past tense forms

Schremm, Andrea LU ; Novén, Mikael LU ; Horne, Merle LU orcid and Roll, Mikael LU (2019) In Journal of Neurolinguistics 51. p.76-83
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... (More)

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.

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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Event-related potentials, Inflection, LAN, Left anterior negativity, Morphology, P600
in
Journal of Neurolinguistics
volume
51
pages
8 pages
publisher
Elsevier
external identifiers
  • scopus:85060752003
ISSN
0911-6044
DOI
10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.01.006
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
0bf58485-0797-4ee0-b4a6-c1a289ecf2fc
date added to LUP
2019-02-11 10:03:38
date last changed
2023-11-18 14:08:34
@article{0bf58485-0797-4ee0-b4a6-c1a289ecf2fc,
  abstract     = {{<p>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.</p>}},
  author       = {{Schremm, Andrea and Novén, Mikael and Horne, Merle and Roll, Mikael}},
  issn         = {{0911-6044}},
  keywords     = {{Event-related potentials; Inflection; LAN; Left anterior negativity; Morphology; P600}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{76--83}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Journal of Neurolinguistics}},
  title        = {{Brain responses to morphologically complex verbs : An electrophysiological study of Swedish regular and irregular past tense forms}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.01.006}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.01.006}},
  volume       = {{51}},
  year         = {{2019}},
}