Enriched sublexical representations to access morphological structures. A psycho-computational account
Chiara Celata, Basilio Calderone, Fabio Montermini · 2011
The paper investigates the morphological impact of quantitative properties of lexical and sublexical structures in the decomposition of morphologically complex words by means of an activation-based simulation. A complex nucleus of blind-to-semantics relationships turns out to allow the emergence of proto-morphological representations and to provide a cognitively efficient route to complex word decomposition. A computational account of how this bundle of information is handled with in the lexical processing of complex pseudo-words is provided. The model is tested against an edit-distance algorithm and a non-word similarity rating task performed by a group of native speakers. RESUME. L'article analyse l'impact morphologique des proprietes quantitatives des structures lexicales et sous-lexicales dans la decomposition de mots morphologiquement complexes en faisant appel a une simulation basee sur des etats d'activation. Nous observons qu'il existe un noyau complexe de relations extra-semantiques capable d'activer des representations proto- morphologiques et de canaliser efficacement la decomposition des mot complexes. Nous pro- posons un modele de manipulation de ce noyau d'information dans l'elaboration lexicale de pseudo-mots complexes. Le modele est teste par rapport a un algorithme de distance d'edition et a des jugements sur la similarite de mots fournis par des locuteurs natifs.