Berent Iris, Vaknin Vered, Marcus Gary F
Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431-0991, USA.
Cognition. 2007 Aug;104(2):254-86. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2006.06.002. Epub 2006 Aug 4.
Is the structure of lexical representations universal, or do languages vary in the fundamental ways in which they represent lexical information? Here, we consider a touchstone case: whether Semitic languages require a special morpheme, the consonantal root. In so doing, we explore a well-known constraint on the location of identical consonants that has often been used as motivation for root representations in Semitic languages: Identical consonants frequently occur at the end of putative roots (e.g., skk), but rarely occur in their beginning (e.g., ssk). Although this restriction has traditionally been stated over roots, an alternative account could be stated over stems, a representational entity that is found more widely across the world's languages. To test this possibility, we investigate the acceptability of a single set of roots, manifesting identity initially, finally or not at all (e.g., ssk versus skk versus rmk) across two nominal paradigms: CéCeC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are rare) and CiCúC (a paradigm in which identical consonants are frequent). If Semitic lexical representations consist of roots only, then similar restrictions on consonant co-occurrence should be observed in the two paradigms. Conversely, if speakers store stems, then the restriction on consonant co-occurrence might be modulated by the properties of the nominal paradigm (be it by means of statistical properties or their grammatical sources). Findings from rating and lexical decision experiments with both visual and auditory stimuli support the stem hypothesis: compared to controls (e.g., rmk), forms with identical consonants (e.g., ssk, skk) are less acceptable in the CéCeC than in the CiCúC paradigm. Although our results do not falsify root-based accounts, they strongly raise the possibility that stems could account for the observed restriction on consonantal identity. As such, our results raise fresh challenge to the notion that different languages require distinct sets of representational resources.
词汇表征的结构是通用的，还是语言在表征词汇信息的基本方式上存在差异？在这里，我们考虑一个试金石案例：闪米特语是否需要一个特殊的语素，即辅音根。通过这样做，我们探索了一个关于相同辅音位置的著名限制，这个限制经常被用作闪米特语中词根表征的动机：相同辅音经常出现在假定词根的末尾（例如，skk），但很少出现在开头（例如，ssk）。虽然这个限制传统上是针对词根提出的，但也可以针对词干提出另一种解释，词干是一种在世界语言中更广泛存在的表征实体。为了测试这种可能性，我们研究了一组词根在两种名词范式中的可接受性，这些词根分别在开头、末尾或根本不显示相同辅音（例如，ssk与skk与rmk）：CéCeC（一种相同辅音很少见的范式）和CiCúC（一种相同辅音很常见的范式）。如果闪米特语的词汇表征仅由词根组成，那么在这两种范式中应该观察到对辅音共现的类似限制。相反，如果说话者存储词干，那么对辅音共现的限制可能会受到名词范式属性的调节（无论是通过统计属性还是其语法来源）。视觉和听觉刺激的评级和词汇判断实验结果支持词干假设：与对照组（例如，rmk）相比，具有相同辅音的形式（例如，ssk，skk）在CéCeC范式中比在CiCúC范式中更不可接受。虽然我们的结果并没有证伪基于词根的解释，但它们强烈地提出了词干可以解释观察到的辅音同一性限制的可能性。因此，我们的结果对不同语言需要不同的表征资源集这一观点提出了新的挑战。
