Two types of discontinuous morphemes are thought to be the basic building blocks of words in Semitic languages:
roots and templates. However, the role of these morphemes in lexical access and representation is debated. Priming experiments,
where reaction times to target words are predicted to be faster when preceded by morphologically-related primes compared to
unrelated control primes, provide conflicting evidence bearing on this debate. We used meta-analysis to synthesise the findings
from 229 priming experiments on 4710 unique Semitic speakers. With Bayesian modelling of the aggregate effect sizes, we found
credible root and template priming in both nouns and verbs in Arabic and Hebrew. Our results show that root priming effects can be
distinguished from the effects of overlap in form and meaning. However, more experiments are needed to determine if template
priming effects can be distinguished from overlap in form and morphosyntactic function.
Abu-Rabia, S. & Awwad, J. (2004). Morphological
structures in visual word recognition: The case of Arabic. Journal of Research in
Reading,
27
(3), 321–336.
Albright, A., & Hayes, B. (2003). Rules
vs. analogy in English past tenses: A computational/experimental
study. Cognition,
90
(2), 119–161.
Baayen, R. H., Chuang, Y. Y., Shafaei-Bajestan, E., & Blevins, J. P. (2019). The
discriminative lexicon: A unified computational model for the lexicon and lexical processing in comprehension and production
grounded not in (de) composition but in linear discriminative
learning. Complexity, vol. 20191, Article
4895891.
Bat-El, O. (1994). Stem
modification and cluster transfer in Modern Hebrew. Natural Language and Linguistics
Theory,
12
1, 571–596.
Bat-El, O. (2003). The
fate of the consonantal root and the binyan in Optimality Theory. Recherches linguistiques de
Vincennes, (32), 31–60.
Bentin, S. & Feldman, L. B. (1990). The
contribution of morphological and semantic relatedness to repetition priming at short and long lags: Evidence from
Hebrew. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology,
42
(4), 693–711.
Bergmann, C., Tsuji, S., Piccinini, P. E., Lewis, M. L., Braginsky, M., Frank, M. C. & Cristia, A. (2018). Promoting
replicability in developmental research through meta-analyses: Insights from language acquisition
research. Child
Development,
89
1, 1996–2009.
Blevins, J. P. (2016). Word
and Paradigm Morphology. Oxford University Press.
Boudelaa, S. & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2000). Non-concatenative
morphemes in language processing: Evidence from modern standard
Arabic. In A. Cutler, J. McQueen, & R. Zondervan (Eds.), Proceedings
of SWAP (Workshop on Spoken Word Access
Processes) (vol. 11, pp. 23–26). Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
Boudelaa, S. & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2005). Discontinuous
morphology in time: Incremental masked priming in Arabic. Language and Cognitive
Processes,
20
(1), 207–260.
Boudelaa, S. & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2011). Productivity
and priming: Morphemic decomposition in Arabic. Language and Cognitive
Processes,
26
(4–6), 624–652.
Boudelaa, S. & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2013). Morphological
structure in the Arabic mental lexicon: Parallels between standard and dialectal
Arabic. Language and Cognitive
Processes,
28
(10), 1453–1473.
Boudelaa, S. & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2015). Structure,
form, and meaning in the mental lexicon: Evidence from Arabic. Language, Cognition and
Neuroscience,
30
(8), 955–992.
Bürkner, P. C. (2017). brms:
An R package for Bayesian multilevel models using Stan. Journal of statistical
software,
80
1, 1–28.
Bybee, J. & McClelland, J. L. (2005). Alternatives
to the combinatorial paradigm of linguistic theory based on domain general principles of human
cognition. The Linguistic
Review,
22
(2–4), 381–410.
Chuang, Y. Y., Kang, M., Xuefeng, L., & Harald, B. R. (2021). Vector
space morphology with linear discriminative learning. In D. Crepaldi (Ed.), Linguistic
morphology in the mind and
brain (pp. 167–183). Routledge.
Clahsen, H., Rothweiler, M., Woest, A. & Marcus, G. (1992). Regular
and irregular inflection in the acquisition of German noun
plurals. Cognition,
45
(3), 225–255.
Creemers, A., Davies, A. G., Wilder, R. J., Tamminga, M., & Embick, D. (2020). Opacity,
transparency, and morphological priming: A study of prefixed verbs in Dutch. Journal of Memory
and Language,
110
1, Article 104055.
Cristia, A. (2018). Can
infants learn phonology in the lab? A meta-analytic
answer. Cognition,
170
1, 312–327.
Deutsch, A., Frost, R. & Forster, K. I. (1998). Verbs
and nouns are organized and accessed differently in the mental lexicon: Evidence from
Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition,
24
(5), 1238–1255.
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., Pollatsek, A. & Rayner, K. (2000). Early
morphological effects in word recognition in Hebrew: Evidence from parafoveal preview
benefit. Language and Cognitive
Processes,
15
(4–5), 487–506.
Deutsch, A., Frost, R., Pollatsek, A., & Rayner, K. (2005). Morphological parafoveal preview benefit effects in reading: Evidence from Hebrew. Language and Cognitive Processes, 20(1–2), 341–371.
Dufour, S. (2008). Phonological
priming in auditory word recognition: when both controlled and automatic processes are responsible for the
effects. Canadian journal of experimental psychology = Revue canadienne de psychologie
expérimentale,
62
(1), 33–41.
Egger, M., Smith, G. D., Schneider, M., & Minder, C. (1997). Bias
in meta-analysis detected by a simple, graphical test. British Medical
Journal,
315
(7109), 629–634.
Frost, R., Deutsch, A., Gilboa, O., Tannenbaum, M., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (2000). Morphological
priming: Dissociation of phonological, semantic, and morphological factors. Memory &
Cognition,
28
(8), 1277–1288.
Frost, R., Forster, K. I., & Deutsch, A. (1997). What
can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological
representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition,
23
(4), 829–856.
Gonnerman, L. M., Seidenberg, M. S., & Andersen, E. S. (2007). Graded
semantic and phonological similarity effects in priming: Evidence for a distributed connectionist approach to
morphology. Journal of Experimental Psychology:
General,
136
(2), 323–345.
Harrer, M., Cuijpers, P., Furukawa, T., & Ebert, D. D. (2019). dmetar:
Companion R Package for The Guide ‘Doing Meta-Analysis in R’ (Version 0.0.
9000) [Computer software]. [URL]
Heitmeier, M., Chuang, Y. Y., & Baayen, R. H. (2022). How
trial-to-trial learning shapes mappings in the mental lexicon: Modelling Lexical Decision with Linear Discriminative
Learning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2207.00430.
Holes, C. (2004). Modern
Arabic: Structures, functions, and varieties. Georgetown University Press.
Kastner, I., Pylkkänen, L., & Marantz, A. (2018). The
form of morphemes: MEG evidence from masked priming of two Hebrew templates. Frontiers in
Psychology,
9
1.
Kastner, I. (2019). Templatic
morphology as an emergent property: Roots and functional heads in Hebrew. Natural Language
& Linguistic
Theory,
37
1, 571–619.
Lüdecke, D. (2019). esc:
effect size computation for meta analysis (Version 0.5.1) [Computer
software]. [URL]
Lukatela, V., Gligorijević, B., Kostić, A., & Turvey, M. T. (1980). Representation
of inflected nouns in the internal lexicon. Memory &
Cognition,
8
(5), 415–423.
McCarthy, J. J. (1979). Formal
Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology [Unpublished doctoral
dissertation]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Milin, P., Feldman, L. B., Ramscar, M., Hendrix, P., & Baayen, R. H. (2017). Discrimination
in lexical decision. PLOS
ONE,
12
(2), Article
e0171935.
Nieder, J., Tomaschek, F., Cohrs, E., & de Vijver, R. V. (2022). Modelling
Maltese noun plural classes without morphemes. Language, Cognition and
Neuroscience,
37
(3), 381–402.
Perea, M., Gotor, A., Rosa, E., & Algarabel, S. (1995). Time
course of semantic activation for different prime-target pairs in the lexical decision task [Poster
presentation]. The 36th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic
Society, Los Angeles, USA.
Prunet, J. (2006). External
evidence and the Semitic
root. Morphology,
16
(1), 41–67.
R Core Team. (2021). R: A language and
environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. [URL]
Seidenberg, M. S. & Gonnerman, L. M. (2000). Explaining
derivational morphology as the convergence of codes. Trends in Cognitive
Sciences,
4
(9), 353–361.
Shadish, W. R., & Haddock, C. K. (2009). Combining
estimates of effect size. In H. Cooper, L. V. Hedges, & J. C. Valentine (Eds.), The
handbook of research synthesis and
meta-analysis (pp. 257–277). Russell Sage Foundation.
Shalhoub-Awwad, Y. (2020). The
role of nominal word pattern in Arabic reading acquisition: Insights from cross-modal
priming. Scientific Studies of
Reading,
24
(4), 307–320.
Shalhoub-Awwad, Y., & Leikin, M. (2016). The
lexical status of the root in processing morphologically complex words in Arabic. Scientific
Studies of
Reading,
20
(4), 296–310.
Slowiaczek, L. M., & Hamburger, M. B. (1992). Prelexical
facilitation and lexical interference in auditory word recognition. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition,
18
(6), 1239–1250.
Smolka, E., Libben, G., & Dressler, W. U. (2019). When
morphological structure overrides meaning: Evidence from German prefix and particle
verbs. Language, Cognition and
Neuroscience,
34
(5), 599–614.
Smolka, E., Preller, K. H., & Eulitz, C. (2014). ‘Verstehen’
(‘understand’) primes ‘stehen’ (‘stand’): Morphological structure overrides semantic compositionality in the lexical
representation of German complex verbs. Journal of Memory and
Language,
72
1, 16–36.
Sterne, J. A. C., & Egger, M. (2001). Funnel
plots for detecting bias in meta-analysis: guidelines on choice of axis. Journal of clinical
epidemiology,
54
(10), 1046–1055.
Sterne, J. A. C., & Harbord, R. M. (2004). Funnel
plots in meta-analysis. The Stata
Journal,
4
(2), 127–141.
Sundara, M., Zhou, Z. L., Breiss, C., Katsuda, H., & Steffman, J. (2021). Infants’
developing sensitivity to native language phonotactics: A
meta-analysis. Cognition,
221
1, 104993.
Taft, M. (1988). A
morphological-decomposition model of lexical
representation. Linguistics,
26
(4), 657–667.
Taft, M. (2004). Morphological
decomposition and the reverse base frequency effect. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology Section
A,
47
(4), 745–765.
Taft, M., & Forster, K. I. (1975). Lexical
storage and retrieval of prefixed words. Journal of Verb Learning and Verb
Behavior,
14
(6), 638–647.
Twist, A. E. (2006). A
psycholinguistic investigation of the verbal morphology of Maltese [Unpublished doctoral
dissertation]. University of Arizona.
Ussishkin, A. (1999). The
inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output–output
correspondence. Phonology,
16
(3), 401–442.
Ussishkin, A. (2005). A
fixed prosodic theory of nonconcatenative templatic morphology. Natural Language and Linguistic
Theory,
23
(1), 169–218.
Ussishkin, A., Dawson, C. R., Wedel, A., & Schluter, K. (2015). Auditory
masked priming in Maltese spoken word recognition. Language, Cognition and
Neuroscience,
30
(9), 1096–1115.
Vasishth, S., Mertzen, D., Jäger, L. A., & Gelman, A. (2018). The
statistical significance filter leads to overoptimistic expectations of replicability. Journal
of Memory and
Language,
103
1, 151–175.