Acquiring novel words and their past tenses: Evidence from lexical effects on phonetic categorisation

Lindsay, Shane; Sedin, Leanne M.; Gaskell, M. Gareth

Abstract

Two experiments addressed how novel verbs come to be represented in the auditory input lexicon, and how the inflected forms of such novel words are acquired and recognised. Participants were introduced to new spoken forms as uninflected verbs. These varied in whether they contained a final /d/ (e.g., confald or confal). Either immediately after training or a week later they performed phonetic categorisation on variants of these forms that ended with an ambiguous phoneme on a /d/-/t/ continuum. Lexical influences in categorisation would be demonstrated by a /d/ response bias, consistent with either the learnt uninflected form (e.g., confald) or a regular past tense inflection of the learnt form (e.g., confalled). In Experiment 1, lexical effects on categorisation were present for both word types, immediately and a week after exposure. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings using degraded stimuli. While lexical effects on response choice were present straight away, lexical facilitation of response speed was stronger after a week. These findings provide evidence for an account of verb learning in which rapidly stored word form information can have immediate lexical properties in some respects, such as allowing generalisation of existing knowledge of verb morphology to new words. However, consolidation over time enhances these representations, enabling swift lexical influences on phoneme perception. Implications for theories of the representation of inflectional forms and the time course of lexical processing of novel words are discussed. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.

Citation

Lindsay, S., Sedin, L. M., & Gaskell, M. G. (2012). Acquiring novel words and their past tenses: Evidence from lexical effects on phonetic categorisation. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(1), 210-225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.07.005

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Sep 8, 2011
• Publication Date: 2012-01
• Deposit Date: May 9, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Memory and Language
• Print ISSN: 0749-596X
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 66
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 210-225
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.07.005
• Keywords: Word learning; Lexicalization; Spoken word recognition; Morphological processing; Phonetic categorization
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3591569