Brain responses to morphologically complex verbs: An electrophysiological study of Swedish regular and irregular past tense forms

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelForskningfagfællebedømt

The present electrophysiological study investigated irregular versus regular verb form processing in Swedish during reading. In line with previous results from other languages, overregularized verbs, i.e. incorrect irregular stem + regular past tense suffix combinations (e.g. *stjäl + de ‘steal + past tense’), elicited a left-lateralized negativity (LAN) relative to correct irregulars (stal ‘stole’), suggesting rule-based decomposition of regularly inflected words. Lack of a similar effect for misapplication of the irregular stem formation pattern on regular verbs (e.g. *löft ‘lifted’ instead of lyfte) suggests the involvement of different processing mechanisms, possibly whole word access, for irregular items, at least to some degree. A P600 showing reprocessing was seen for all incorrect forms. The results add cross-linguistic support for morphological decomposition in the verbal inflection of a language where results from previous neurolinguistic studies of nominal inflection have only suggested the use of full-form access to words.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftJournal of Neurolinguistics
Vol/bind51
Sider (fra-til)76-83
Antal sider8
ISSN0911-6044
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2019
Eksternt udgivetJa

Bibliografisk note

(Ekstern)
Funding Information:
This work was supported by Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (grant number 2014.0139 ), Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg Foundation (grant number 2014.0039 ), and the Swedish Research Council (grant number 2011-2284 ).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 The Authors

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