LINGUIST List 17.1580
Wed May 24 2006
Diss: Morphology: Manouilidou: 'On the Processing of Thematic Featu...'
Editor for this issue: Meredith Valant
<meredithlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Christina
Manouilidou,
On the Processing of Thematic Features in Deverbal Nominals
Message 1: On the Processing of Thematic Features in Deverbal Nominals
Date: 23-May-2006
From: Christina Manouilidou <cmano074uottawa.ca>
Subject: On the Processing of Thematic Features in Deverbal Nominals
Institution: University of Ottawa
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Christina Manouilidou
Dissertation Title: On the Processing of Thematic Features in Deverbal Nominals
Linguistic Field(s):
Morphology
Subject Language(s): Greek (ell)
Dissertation Director:
Eva Kehayia
Eta Schneiderman
Dissertation Abstract:
The primary motivation for the research reported in the presentdissertation was to investigate the status of thematic features (TFs) indeverbal nominals (DNs) in Modern Greek. The investigation addressed twoindependent issues with respect to TFs of DNs. The first was whether theprocessing of TFs of DNs constitutes a necessary step in accessing theirmental representation. The second concerned the status of thematicconstraints in deverbal word formation. Three on-line lexical decisiontasks and one off-line grammaticality judgment task were carried out. Thestimuli for these tasks included deverbal nouns, deverbal adjectives andpseudo-words violating thematic constraints. The findings showed that TFsappear to increase processing load only for those DNs with an increasedeventive character (e.g. plysimo 'washing', kallymenos 'covered'), with adecomposition access route possibly playing a facilitatory role. Incontrast, TFs do not appear to affect processing in the case of DNs with adiminished 'verb-like' character (e.g. conqueror). Furthermore, lexicalaccess results for pseudo-words indicated that TFs impose constraints whichoperate at a later stage of word formation compared to other constraints,such as categorial specifications of the base. This strongly suggests thatTFs play a crucial role in the creation of new DNs, independently of thetype of nominal.
The findings of the present study have implications for bothpsycholinguistics and theoretical linguistics. The psycholinguisticimplications relate to the stage-like nature of lexical access, theexistence of a general representational component called featurerepresentation, and the role of grammatical class in both lexical accessand the organization of the lexicon. The linguistic implicationsprincipally inform theories of word formation postulating featurepercolation, as well as the role of various constraints operating duringderivation. The experimental results support the view that the creation ofa new word is subject to constraints specific to the morphologicaloperations involved in it, such as thematic constraints for DNs.Furthermore, constraints seem to apply sequentially, with degrees ofviolability even for those constraints which are considered to be strong.More importantly, there appears to be a relationship between violabilityand late application, with those constraints that apply at a later stagebeing more violable.
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