Production of regular and non-regular verbs [Elektronische Ressource] : evidence for a lexical entry complexity account / Helena Trompelt. [Universität Potsdam]

Universität Potsdam
Helena Trompelt
Production of regular and
non-regular verbs
Evidence for a lexical entry complexity account
Spektrum Patholinguistik – Schriften | 2 Spektrum Patholinguistik – Schriften | 2
Spektrum Patholinguistik – Schriften | 2













Helena Trompelt

Production of regular and non-regular verbs

Evidence for a lexical entry complexity account
















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Universitätsverlag Potsdam 2010
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Satz: Martin Anselm Meyerhoff
Druck: docupoint GmbH Magdeburg

Zugl.: Potsdam, Univ., Diss., 2010
1st reviewer: Prof. Dr. Ria De Bleser
2nd reviewer: Prof. Dr. Thomas Pechmann
Day of submission: October 13, 2009 oral defense: April 12, 2010

ISSN (print) 1869 ‐3822
ISSN (online) 1869 ‐3830

ISBN 978-3-86956-061-8

Zugleich online veröffentlicht
auf dem Publikationsserver der Universität Potsdam
URL http://pub.ub.uni ‐potsdam.de/volltexte/2010/4212/
URN urn:nbn:de:kobv:517 ‐opus ‐42120
http://nbn ‐resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517 ‐opus ‐42120 Acknowledgement
Many thanks to all the people who have helped me both
personally and professionally to accomplish the work put forth in
this dissertation.
First and foremost, I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Thomas Pechmann
for his knowledgeable supervision and for always demanding
maximal clarity and accuracy of exposition.
This work would not have been possible without Prof. Dr. Ria De
Bleser. Her comments and discussions along the way were
important for the progress of this work.
The Graduiertenkolleg Universalität und Diversität at the
University of Leipzig and the Graduate Programme for Experimental
and Clinical Linguistics at the University of Potsdam supported me
in investigating an exciting phenomenon of German language
production. I was not only provided with financial support, but
also benefited from the contributions of all my remarkable
colleagues.
I am indebted to Dr. habil. Denisa Bordag for her constant and
close supervision. She made difficult things look natural and easy
and helped enormously by introducing me to the methods and
technical work. Special thanks for our extended and substantial
discussions of linguistic concepts too!
I would like to thank my friends Lars Meyer, Judith Heide, Tyko
Dirksmeyer, Kristina Kasparian and Antje Lorenz very much for
i ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
smart comments on a first version of this thesis and for
thoroughly smoothing transitions.
Most important of all: I count myself truly fortunate for having
made and kept many dear friends, both before and during
graduate school – who made this time enriching and memorable.
By relating your problems and experiences to me, you helped me
to solve my own problems, and ultimately helped me to come to a
better.
Finally, the greatest debts of gratitude by far are to my parents
and my sister Antonia. Contents
Acknowledgement................................................................... i
Contents................................................................................iii
List of Tables........................................................................vii
List of Figuresix
Abbreviations..........................................................................x
0 Introduction ................................................................... 1
1 Regular and non-regular inflection................................... 5
1.1 Inflectional categories ..........................................................5
1.2 Paradigms and classes .........................................................7
1.3 Language typology ..............................................................9
1.3.1 German verbal inflectional system ..................................10
1.3.2 Comparison of English and German inflectional system...11
1.4 Aspects of regular and non-regular nominal inflection ........ 13
1.5 Summary........................................................................... 17
2 Approaches to regular and non-regular inflection............19
2.1 Articulation latencies of regular and non-regular verbs ....... 19
2.2 Dual Route models of language production........................ 21
2.3 The Words and Rules Theory ............................................ 22
2.3.1 The blocking mechanism................................................24
iii iv CONTENTS
2.3.2 Psycholinguistic evidence for a regular/non-regular
dissociation of verbs....................................................... 27
2.3.3 Representation of regularity in the Words and Rules
Theory........................................................................... 35
2.3.4 The Words-and-Rules-Theory’s difficulties...................... 37
2.4 Connectionist accounts...................................................... 38
2.4.1 The Pattern Associator..................................................40
2.4.2 Strengths and weaknesses of connectionist models ......... 44
2.5 Summary 45
3 Psycholinguistic models of language production..............47
3.1 Lexical access and lexical selection..................................... 47
3.2 The Levelt Model (Levelt, 1999)........................................ 53
3.2.1 Architecture................................................................... 53
3.2.2 Diacritic parameters.......................................................56
3.3 The Interactive Activation Model....................................... 58
3.4 The Independent Network Model 61
3.5 Discrete versus cascaded processing................................... 65
3.6 Remarks on diversity of models.......................................... 65
3.7 Producing morphologically complex words ......................... 66
3.8 Morphological processing in comprehension ....................... 68
4 Representation and processing of grammatical features ..71
4.1 Representation of linguistic information in the mental
lexicon............................................................................... 71
4.1.1 Structure of the mental lexicon......................................72
4.1.2 Underspecified lexical entries.......................................... 74
4.2 Internal and external features ............................................ 75
4.3 Processing grammatical gender 77
4.4 Processing declension and conjugation classes.................... 79
5 Tense............................................................................83
6 The empirical stance......................................................87