Testing the Stem Dominance Hypothesis: Meaning Analysis of Inflected Words and Prepositional Phrases

Minna Lehtonen, Gabor Harrer, Erling Wande, Matti Laine, Kevin Paterson
2014 PLoS ONE  
We tested the hypothesis that lexical-semantic access of inflected words is governed by the word stem. Object drawings overlaid with a dot/arrow marking position/movement were matched with corresponding linguistic expressions like "from the house". To test whether the stem dominates lexical-semantic access irrespective of its position, we used Swedish prepositional phrases (locative information via preposition immediately preceding the stem) or Finnish case-inflected words (locative information
more » ... via suffix immediately following the stem). Both in monolingual Swedish and in bilingual Finnish-Swedish speakers, correct stems with incorrect prepositions/case-endings were hardest to reject. This finding supports the view that the stem is indeed the dominant unit in meaning access of inflected words. Citation: Lehtonen M, Harrer G, Wande E, Laine M (2014) Testing the Stem Dominance Hypothesis: Meaning Analysis of Inflected Words and Prepositional Phrases. PLoS ONE 9(3): e93136.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0093136 pmid:24676218 pmcid:PMC3968051 fatcat:sv4e7rtxd5e33hjijmgmrfas7i