ERIC Number: EJ757323
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2007-May
Pages: 18
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0749-596X
EISSN: N/A
Part-of-Speech Persistence: The Influence of Part-of-Speech Information on Lexical Processes
Melinger, Alissa; Koenig, Jean-Pierre
Journal of Memory and Language, v56 n4 p472-489 May 2007
This paper presents three naming experiments designed to investigate whether the activation levels of syntactic features associated with lexical items, specifically part-of-speech information, can influence lexical processes. Naming preferences for orthographically ambiguous but phonologically distinct English nouns and verbs, such as "convict" (CONvict [subscript n] vs. conVICT [subscript v]) were compared. In Experiment 1, ambiguous target words were preceded by unambiguous noun, verb, and letter (control) primes. Experiments 2 and 3 were designed to distinguish whether the priming effects observed in Experiment 1 have a syntactic or a semantic locus. In all three experiments, we found an influence of the part-of-speech of the prime on speakers' naming preferences for the target. The results support a model of the lexicon in which part-of-speech information can influence lexical processes.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A