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. 2022 Jul 27:13:910849.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.910849. eCollection 2022.

Mental Representation of Word Family Structure: The Case of German Infinitives, Conversion Nouns and Other Morphologically Related Forms

Andreas Opitz  1 , Denisa Bordag  1   2 , Alberto Furgoni  1   3
Affiliations

Mental Representation of Word Family Structure: The Case of German Infinitives, Conversion Nouns and Other Morphologically Related Forms

Andreas Opitz et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

This study investigates how two non-finite forms, infinitives and conversion nouns, are represented in the mind of L1 and L2 speakers and what is their relationship to other members of the corresponding word family. German native speakers and proficient German learners with Czech as L1 participated in four overt priming experiments involving a grammatical judgement task. We investigated the relationship between infinitives (Experiment 1) and conversion nouns (Experiment 2) and formally identical verbal or noun forms. We further focussed on the relationship between conversion nouns and regular nominal derivation forms with two derivational suffixes: -er and -ung (Experiments 3 and 4). Our results show that the two non-finite forms differ in their relations to other members of a word family and do not constitute a special class of non-finites as suggested in previous literature. While German infinitives seem to be closer related to finite verbal forms, conversion nouns behave in the same way as other regular nominal derivatives within the same word family. As for the German L1 and L2 contrast, no significant difference in the mental representation of the examined forms was found. This finding suggests that with respect to the explored phenomena, proficient learners rely on the same linguistic organisation as L1 speakers.

Keywords: L1; L2; conversion nouns; infinitives; mental lexicon; morphology; priming; word family.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experiment 1 (target: infinitive): mean reaction times for target phrases.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Experiment 2 (target: conversion noun): mean reaction times for target phrases.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Experiment 3 (target: inflected verb): mean reaction times for target phrases.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Experiment 4 (target: derived noun): mean reaction times for target phrases.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The figure represents a simplified summary of the priming relationships, focusing on the non-finite forms (conversion nouns and infinitives) in the centre. It combines the priming results of the current study and those of Bordag and Opitz (2021). The types of lines represent the different degree of priming between the forms. Arrows correspond to the priming direction. For the sake of clarity, some of the forms are collapsed into one circle (i.e., inflected forms and productive derivation) and the type of priming between them is represented in the line type of the circle (i.e., full priming between inflected forms, partial priming between productively derived forms).
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