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The Neural Encoding of Arabic Root Patterns : A Behavioral Pilot Study
Nagle, Lindsay Nagle, Lindsay
Nagle, Lindsay
Nagle, Lindsay
Title
The Neural Encoding of Arabic Root Patterns : A Behavioral Pilot Study
Date
2020-05-04
Subject
Morphology
Arabic
Brain imaging
Neural Decoding
Magnetoencephalography
Connectivity
Arabic
Brain imaging
Neural Decoding
Magnetoencephalography
Connectivity
Material type
Collections
Files
Abstract
Words in Semitic languages, like Arabic and Hebrew, are created by combining roots and word patterns. In some cases, a word may be composed of a root that repeats a consonant. This consonant repetition is a part of a process called reduplication. Reduplication results in Semitic languages having a morphological root structure, in which some words have a root that repeats the second consonant. The behavioral pilot study I am doing is interested in this reduplication pattern, and if Arabic speakers generalize the root patterns onto words they know, and ones they do not. In a study done by Berent (2002), she had found Hebrew speakers rejected nonwords with unattested repetition patterns, or nonwords with roots that repeated the first consonant, at a faster rate than they rejected nonwords with an attested repetition pattern, or nonwords that had roots that repeated the second consonant. After replicating her experiment with Arabic speakers in a pilot study, we plan to test Arabic speakers in a scanner to assess the representation of reduplication patterns in the brain. Through neural decoding and effective connectivity analyses of brain imaging data, we hope to determine if reduplication is a rule-driven process (grammar) or an associative process involved in mapping speech to stored wordform representations.
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Psychology