scholarly journals Examining the role of lexical frequency in the acquisition and processing of sentential complements

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Kidd ◽  
Elena Lieven ◽  
Michael Tomasello
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Frequency

scholarly journals Semantic and lexical features of words dissimilarly affected by non-fluent, logopenic, and semantic primary progressive aphasia

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (10) ◽  
pp. 1011-1022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jet M. J. Vonk ◽  
Roel Jonkers ◽  
H. Isabel Hubbard ◽  
Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini ◽  
Adam M. Brickman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Processing ◽  
Mental Lexicon ◽  
Primary Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Progressive Aphasia ◽  
Primary Progressive ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Psycholinguistic Variables

AbstractObjective:To determine the effect of three psycholinguistic variables—lexical frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and neighborhood density (ND)—on lexical-semantic processing in individuals with non-fluent (nfvPPA), logopenic (lvPPA), and semantic primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Identifying the scope and independence of these features can provide valuable information about the organization of words in our mind and brain.Method:We administered a lexical decision task—with words carefully selected to permit distinguishing lexical frequency, AoA, and orthographic ND effects—to 41 individuals with PPA (13 nfvPPA, 14 lvPPA, 14 svPPA) and 25 controls.Results:Of the psycholinguistic variables studied, lexical frequency had the largest influence on lexical-semantic processing, but AoA and ND also played an independent role. The results reflect a brain-language relationship with different proportional effects of frequency, AoA, and ND in the PPA variants, in a pattern that is consistent with the organization of the mental lexicon. Individuals with nfvPPA and lvPPA experienced an ND effect consistent with the role of inferior frontal and temporoparietal regions in lexical analysis and word form processing. By contrast, individuals with svPPA experienced an AoA effect consistent with the role of the anterior temporal lobe in semantic processing.Conclusions:The findings are in line with a hierarchical mental lexicon structure with a conceptual (semantic) and a lexeme (word-form) level, such that a selective deficit at one of these levels of the mental lexicon manifests differently in lexical-semantic processing performance, consistent with the affected language-specific brain region in each PPA variant.

scholarly journals Exploring the role of token frequency in phonological change: evidence from TH-Fronting in east-central Scotland

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
LYNN CLARK ◽  
GRAEME TROUSDALE
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Exact Nature ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
East Central ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Motivating Factor ◽  
Phonological Change ◽  
The Relationship

Recent research on frequency effects in phonology suggests that word frequency is often a significant motivating factor in the spread of sound change through the lexicon. However, there is conflicting evidence regarding the exact nature of the relationship between phonological change and word frequency. This article investigates the role of lexical frequency in the spread of the well-known sound change TH-Fronting in an under-researched dialect area in east-central Scotland. Using data from a corpus of conversations compiled over a two-year period by the first author, we explore how the process of TH-Fronting is complicated in this community by the existence of certain local variants which are lexically restricted, and we question to what extent the frequency patterns that are apparent in these data are consistent with generalisations made in the wider literature on the relationship between lexical frequency and phonological change.

Vowel dominance in overregularizations

1993 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Paul Stemberger
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Processing ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Tense Form ◽  
Several Variables ◽  
Base Form

ABSTRACTWhen children produce regularizations likecomed, not all verbs are equally likely to be regularized. Several variables (e.g. lexical frequency) have been shown to be relevant, but not all the variability between verbs is understood. It is argued here that one predictor is which vowels are present in the base form vs. the past tense form. Using a notion of recessive vs. dominant vowel (where recessive vowels are more likely to be replaced by dominant vowels than vice versa) based on adult phonological processing, it is predicted that regularizations should be likely when the base vowel is dominant and unlikely when the past tense vowel is dominant. Data from 17 children reported in the literature, aged 1;6–5;6, show that this prediction is correct. Implications for the role of phonological variables in the processing of irregular past tense forms are discussed.

On the deletion of word-final schwa in Southern French

Phonology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julien Eychenne
Keyword(s):  
Basque Country ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Phonological Knowledge ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Data Points

Although a growing body of literature in formal phonology has espoused the view that phonological knowledge is gradient and probabilistic, this perspective remains somewhat controversial. This paper provides further empirical support for this strand of work: it offers an analysis of the gradient deletion of word-final schwa in Southern French, using a corpus containing 7787 data points obtained from 45 subjects spread over three dialectal areas (the Basque Country, Languedoc and Provence). In addition to confirming or nuancing previous findings about the role of several phonological and non-phonological variables, the study demonstrates the influence of lexical frequency, grammatical category, sonority and the feature specification of the consonant before schwa.

Testing the role of phonetic knowledge in Mandarin tone sandhi

Phonology ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Zhang ◽  
Yuwen Lai
Keyword(s):  
Tone Sandhi ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Disyllabic Words ◽  
Mandarin Speakers ◽  
Mandarin Tone ◽  
Novel Words

AbstractPhonological patterns often have phonetic bases. But whether phonetic substance should be encoded in synchronic phonological grammar is controversial. We aim to test the synchronic relevance of phonetics by investigating native Mandarin speakers' applications of two exceptionless tone sandhi processes to novel words: the contour reduction 213→21/—T (T≠213), which has a clear phonetic motivation, and the perceptually neutralising 213→35/—213, whose phonetic motivation is less clear. In two experiments, Mandarin subjects were asked to produce two individual monosyllables together as two different types of novel disyllabic words. Results show that speakers apply the 213→21 sandhi with greater accuracy than the 213→35 sandhi in novel words, indicating a synchronic bias against the phonetically less motivated pattern. We also show that lexical frequency is relevant to the application of the sandhis to novel words, but cannot account alone for the low sandhi accuracy of 213→35.

scholarly journals Lexical Frequency and Frequency of Co-Occurrence Predict the Use of Embedded-Language Islands in Bilingual Speech: Adjective-Modified Nominal Constituents in Russian-German Code-Mixing

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-539
Author(s):  
Nikolay Hakimov
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Methods ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Lexical Frequency ◽  
Corpus Linguistic ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Usage Frequency ◽  
Language Mixing ◽  
Co Activation

Abstract This article explores the role of usage frequency in the structure of language mixing by the application of corpus-linguistic and statistical methods. The goal of the study is to reveal that the frequency of a lexical item and the frequency with which it occurs with other items account for its use in bilingual speech. To achieve this goal, I analyze German monolingual and German-Russian mixed adjective-modified nominal constituents in otherwise Russian discourse in a corpus of Russian-German bilingual speech collected from fluent bilinguals in Russian-speaking communities in Germany. My findings show that many of German nominal constituents, also called embedded-language islands, are recurrent A-N combinations. However, in the absence of sequential associations between the involved words, the adjectives may be realized in Russian or in German. In light of this evidence, I suggest two mechanisms underlying the production of embedded-language islands: retrieval of a multiword chunk and co-activation.

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