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Mental Representation of Word Family Structure: The Case of German Infinitives, Conversion Nouns and Other Morphologically Related Forms

This study investigates how two non-finite forms, infinitives and conversion nouns, are
represented in the mind of L1 and L2 speakers and what is their relationship to other
members of the corresponding word family. German native speakers and proficient
German learners with Czech as L1 participated in four overt priming experiments involving
a grammatical judgement task. We investigated the relationship between infinitives
(Experiment 1) and conversion nouns (Experiment 2) and formally identical verbal or noun
forms. We further focussed on the relationship between conversion nouns and regular
nominal derivation forms with two derivational suffixes: -er and -ung (Experiments 3 and
4). Our results show that the two non-finite forms differ in their relations to other members
of a word family and do not constitute a special class of non-finites as suggested in
previous literature. While German infinitives seem to be closer related to finite verbal forms,
conversion nouns behave in the same way as other regular nominal derivatives within the
same word family. As for the German L1 and L2 contrast, no significant difference in the
mental representation of the examined forms was found. This finding suggests that with
respect to the explored phenomena, proficient learners rely on the same linguistic
organisation as L1 speakers.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:87948
Date09 November 2023
CreatorsOpitz, Andreas, Bordag, Denisa, Furgoni, Alberto
PublisherFrontiers Media S.A.
Source SetsHochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:article, info:eu-repo/semantics/article, doc-type:Text
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relation910849, 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.910849

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