title: Mental lexicon and derivational rules.
abstract: Lexical decision task in an event-related potential experiment was used in order to determine the organization of mental lexicon regarding the polimorphemic words: are they stored as unanalyzable items or as separate morphemes? The results indicate the later: while monomorphemic words elicit N400 component, usually related to lexical-semantic processing, prefixed words and prefixed pseudo-words elicit left anterior negativity (LAN), usually related to grammatical (morphosyntactic) processes. These components indicate that the speakers apply grammatical (i.e., word-formation) rules and combine morphemes in order to obtain lexical meaning of the prefixed word.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Psycholinguistic Research, Department for Speech and Language Pathology, Faculty of Education and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia. palmovic@erf.hr
authors.forename: Marijan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Palmović
authors.forename: Antonija
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maricić
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004594:Electrophysiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics