Biomedical subjects

R Coolen

Publications and source records attributed to R Coolen.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1993

Processing discontinuous words: on the interface between lexical and syntactic processing.

How are discontinuous words processed? Are they identified in the lexicon or in the syntax? Schreuder (1990) proposes the existence of morphological integration nodes (MI nodes) to account for the representation of complex verbs with separable prefixes in Dutch. We tested the MI model during sentence processing in Dutch, using an ungrammaticality judgment task. The results supported the predictions of the Schreuder model, and also provide evidence for distinct lexical/morphological and syntactic processing subsystems, each driven by the information resources and tasks relevant to its own representational vocabulary. It is argued that no special principles are needed to govern the interaction of lexical/morphological and syntactic processing, even for the identification of discontinuous words; this follows automatically from independently required characterizations of the subsystems themselves. We also examine the principles underlying the MI model in an attempt to extend the model to a wider array of constructions and languages. It is hypothesized that frequently encountered linguistic expressions are represented in the lexicon. In the basic case, they are represented as access nodes, if they may stand alone, and as MI nodes, if their constituents are already represented by access nodes. Unlike the original MI model, no further stipulation is needed concerning the existence or inhibition properties of MI nodes, assuming that candidate lexical/morphological hypotheses are appended to whatever portion(s) of the input string they are hypotheses about.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

Processing novel compounds: evidence for interactive meaning activation of ambiguous nouns.

In three experiments, the meaning activation of ambiguous nouns in novel nominal compounds was investigated. Ambiguous nouns were unbalanced homographs occurring as the second members of the compound. Meaningful interpretations of the compounds were based on either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous noun. In Experiment 1, visually presented novel compounds serving as primes were followed at varying intervals by targets associatively related to distinct meanings of the ambiguous noun. In a lexical decision task, facilitation effects were found only for targets related to the meaning that was relevant for the interpretation of the compound. Experiment 2 showed that interactive activation could not be attributed to differences in semantic relatedness between the first members of compounds and targets. Experiment 3 demonstrated equal intralexical relatedness between members for both types of compounds. It is proposed that interactive activation may facilitate the interpretation of the novel compound. Compatible meaning aspects of the nouns may become more strongly activated, and incompatible meaning aspects may not become activated. The selection of meaning aspects relevant for interpretation would thereby be simplified.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

The interpretation of isolated novel nominal compounds.

The lexical decision task was used to investigate interpretative processing of isolated novel compounds (noun-noun nominals). On the basis of interpretability ratings, novel compounds were classified as being of either high or low interpretability. In a lexical decision task in which novel compounds functioned as nonwords, a significant interference effect was found for compounds of high interpretability. In a naming task, no differences were found between the two types of novel compounds, but lexicalized compounds resulted in shorter latencies than did novel compounds. Novel compounds were also shown to be interpreted under conditions unfavorable to morphological decomposition, suggesting that the interpretation process is beyond strategic control by the subject. Equal semantic priming effects were obtained for members of established semantic categories and nouns of highly interpretable compounds. Interpretative processes dealing with a limited set of basic semantic relations and analogy with lexicalized compounds are discussed.

Adult↗