PLoS ONE (Jan 2014)

Testing the stem dominance hypothesis: meaning analysis of inflected words and prepositional phrases.

  • Minna Lehtonen,
  • Gabor Harrer,
  • Erling Wande,
  • Matti Laine

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0093136
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 3
p. e93136

Abstract

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We tested the hypothesis that lexical-semantic access of inflected words is governed by the word stem. Object drawings overlaid with a dot/arrow marking position/movement were matched with corresponding linguistic expressions like "from the house". To test whether the stem dominates lexical-semantic access irrespective of its position, we used Swedish prepositional phrases (locative information via preposition immediately preceding the stem) or Finnish case-inflected words (locative information via suffix immediately following the stem). Both in monolingual Swedish and in bilingual Finnish-Swedish speakers, correct stems with incorrect prepositions/case-endings were hardest to reject. This finding supports the view that the stem is indeed the dominant unit in meaning access of inflected words.