Processing of compound nouns: Psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic investigations

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Gerhard Blanken
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2010 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 187803757

The human processing of German compound nouns is investigated (in continuation of DFG-Project in order to determine (a) which lexical-semantic factors affect processing of these stimuli,, (b) whether conceptual-combinatory processes are involved in the processing of lexicalized compounds, and (c) whether lemma information is accessed not only at the whole-word level but also at the level of the components (and in particular the non-head constituents). For that purpose (a) the aphasic picture naming data for 100 compound targets are analyzed regarding the potential impact of the factors of lexical frequency (whole word and components), component position and age of acquisition (whole word and components) on the patients´ indovidual patterns of functional disturbance;(b) experimental investigations are run with aphasic and non-aphasic speakers determining the role of thematic relations between the compound components (modifier and head) with Gagné and co-workers´theory of conceptual combination as theoretical framework and starting point ;(c) the influence of the syntactic feature of gender (lemma level) (head and also modifier) is investigated using gender decision tasks with aphasic and non-aphasic subjects.As a leading hypothesis it is assumed that compounding is based on constructive and compositional lexical capacities both on a conceptual and a syntactic level of processsing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Participating Person: Dr. Tobias Bormann