Syntactic and semantic restrictions on morphological recomposition: MEG evidence from Greek

K. Neophytou, C. Manouilidou, L. Stockall, A. Marantz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Complex morphological processing has been extensively studied in the past decades. However, most of this work has either focused on only certain steps involved in this process, or it has been conducted on a few languages, like English. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the spatiotemporal cortical processing profile of the distinct steps previously reported in the literature, from decomposition to re-composition of morphologically complex items, in a relatively understudied language, Greek. Using magnetoencephalography, we confirm the role of the fusiform gyrus in early, form-based morphological decomposition, we relate the syntactic licensing of stem-suffix combinations to the ventral visual processing stream, somewhat independent from lexical access for the stem, and we further elucidate the role of orbitofrontal regions in semantic composition. Thus, the current study offers the most comprehensive test to date of visual morphological processing and additional, crosslinguistic validation of the steps involved in it.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)11-20
Number of pages10
JournalBrain and Language
Volume183
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2018

Keywords

  • Full Decomposition model
  • Greek
  • Magnetoencephalography
  • Morphology
  • Visual word processing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
  • Linguistics and Language
  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Speech and Hearing

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