Psihologija 2011 Volume 44, Issue 4, Pages: 343-366
https://doi.org/10.2298/PSI1104343R
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Morpho-semantic properties of Serbian nouns: Animacy and gender pairs
Radanović Jelena (Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, Novi Sad)
Milin Petar (Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, Belgrade + Department of Psychology, Novi Sad)
In this study we investigated whether and how the cognitive system uses
morphological markedness of animacy and gender pairs. In the Serbian language
masculine nouns are marked for animacy (i.e., genitive-accusative
syncretism), while for feminine nouns the animacy distinction is purely
semantic. Thus, in Experiment 1 we used this natural, linguistic
differentiation to test whether morphological markedness of animacy
influences lexical processing. In the same experiment, we tested whether the
cognitive system is sensitive to the fact that some animate nouns have a
sibling in the other gender (e.g., dečak /”boy”/ - devojčica /”girl”/), while
others do not have it (e.g., vojnik /”soldier”/ or žirafa /”giraffe”/). We
labeled this indicator sibling presence. The analysis did not confirm the
effect of animacy, neither between nor within genders. However, animate nouns
with a sibling were processed faster than those without a sibling. Since the
majority of sibling nouns are morphologically related (like konobar
/”waiter”/ - konobarica /”waitress”/), while the rest are not (e.g., petao
/”rooster”/ - kokoška /”hen”/), in Experiment 2 we tested whether
morphological relatedness contributed to the effect of sibling presence.
Results showed that this is not the case: morphologically related and
unrelated masculine-feminine pairs of nouns (siblings) were processed equally
fast. Furthermore, an interaction between the target’s frequency and the
frequency of its sibling was observed: nouns with a more frequent sibling
benefited more from their own frequency than those with a less frequent
sibling. We argue that sibling support is realized through semantic, not
morphological relations. Taken together, our findings suggest that
morphological markedness is not used in lexical processing, which is in line
with an amorphous approach to lexical processing.
Keywords: lexical processing, animacy, gender pairs