TY - JOUR
T1 - Capturing the effects of semantic transparency in word recognition
T2 - a cross-linguistic study on Cantonese and Persian
AU - Momenian, Mohammad
AU - Cham, Shuk K.
AU - Mohammad Amini, Jafar
AU - Radman, Narges
AU - Weekes, Brendan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by a Faculty Research Fund (0002503371016651000010001), University of Hong Kong awarded to Mohammad Momenian by Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong and a grant (6292) awarded to Narges Radman by Iran Cognitive Sciences and Technologies Fund. We would like to thank William Marslen-Wilson for hosting Shuk K. Cham at University of Cambridge and giving feedback on the design of the Cantonese study. We would like to thank Eva Wittenberg and Marco Marelli for giving us precious comments on the study and manuscript. We would like to thank Stephen Politzer-Ahles for his great comments on the analysis of the data.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021/1/7
Y1 - 2021/1/7
N2 - An important question in psycholinguistics is whether or not the semantic transparency of words plays any role during the processing of compound words. Studies of different languages have produced mixed results suggesting that semantic properties of compounding do not have a universal effect. This paper uses masked priming at three different SOAs to study the possible effects of semantic transparency and grammatical class on processing of Persian and Cantonese compounds. We found priming effects in all types of compounds across both languages regardless of semantic transparency and grammatical class. Our findings revealed processing patterns which were unique to each language. We contend that compounding is a complex process influenced by the interactions among the unique properties of each language such as productivity, headedness, and the writing system.
AB - An important question in psycholinguistics is whether or not the semantic transparency of words plays any role during the processing of compound words. Studies of different languages have produced mixed results suggesting that semantic properties of compounding do not have a universal effect. This paper uses masked priming at three different SOAs to study the possible effects of semantic transparency and grammatical class on processing of Persian and Cantonese compounds. We found priming effects in all types of compounds across both languages regardless of semantic transparency and grammatical class. Our findings revealed processing patterns which were unique to each language. We contend that compounding is a complex process influenced by the interactions among the unique properties of each language such as productivity, headedness, and the writing system.
KW - Cantonese
KW - light verb construction
KW - masked priming
KW - Persian
KW - semantic transparency
KW - SOA
KW - verb noun compound
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85099228749
U2 - 10.1080/23273798.2020.1862878
DO - 10.1080/23273798.2020.1862878
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85099228749
SN - 2327-3798
VL - 36
SP - 612
EP - 624
JO - Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
JF - Language, Cognition and Neuroscience
IS - 5
ER -