Project

In many languages there is systematic variation between the morphophonological patterns of nouns and verbs. Morphophonological theories have constructed grammatical devises to capture the differences in form, but they do not address two central questions: why do languages have such asymmetries, and what are the mechanisms by which native speakers attain knowledge about them?

The central hypothesis of this project is that such difference are useful for the language user in two respects. First, by narrowing down potential meanings for a word form, the difference helps comprehension. Second by narrowing down potential word forms for a given meaning, the difference helps production.

The aim of the project is to answer the following research questions:

RQ1: Are the systematic differences in the morpho-phonology of nouns and verbs accompanied by systematic differences in their meaning?
RQ2: Can we model comprehension and production of nouns and verbs in a usage-based theory of the lexicon, i.e. the Discriminative Lexicon, by predicting word forms from meaning and meaning from word forms?
RQ3: Can the Discriminative Lexicon predict how speakers process nouns versus verbs, by using measures derived from modeling how they predict word forms from meaning and meaning from word forms?

The research questions will be tackled using a range of different methodologies. The project will make use of classification models of the phonology of nouns and verbs and their embeddings, lexical decision experiments of words and pseudowords, and implement computational models of comprehension and production of nouns and verbs within the framework of the Discriminative Lexicon.