Prosodic and {morpho} syntactic effects on lexical access in German and in French

• Applicant: Dr. Frédéric Isel
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology
• Term: from 2002 to 2012
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 5375531

Both behavioral an delectroencephalographical cross-linguistic studies show that prosodic information can constrain the activation of lexical entries during a prelexical stage in the word-recognition process. In contrast, electroencephalographical investigations and some behavioral evidence suggest that morphosyntactic processing of gender information might rather occur during a postlexical stage. Our goal in the present project is to explore if and how prosodic and morphosyntactic information interact during the auditory processing of mono- and polymorphemic German and French nouns. By investigating the lexical access to compound words in two languages that present a reversal picture with respect to the moment at which prosodic and gender information is available in the word (i.e, early in German vs. late in French regarding prosody, and early in French vs. late in German regarding gender information), one might be able to capture the temporal structure of a potential interaction between prosody and morphosyntax. Moreover, the use of the high-temporal resolution technique of electroencephalo- graphy should enhance the chance to tap online the two processes under exploration. Thus, on the basis of the cross-linguistic evidence we would collect in the present project, we could specify the computation of prosodic and morphosyntactic information in the prosody-assisted parallel dual-route (PAP) model proposed by Isel, Gunter, & Friederici (submitted).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants