title: Testing the stem dominance hypothesis: meaning analysis of inflected words and prepositional phrases.
abstract: We tested the hypothesis that lexical-semantic access of inflected words is governed by the word stem. Object drawings overlaid with a dot/arrow marking position/movement were matched with corresponding linguistic expressions like "from the house". To test whether the stem dominates lexical-semantic access irrespective of its position, we used Swedish prepositional phrases (locative information via preposition immediately preceding the stem) or Finnish case-inflected words (locative information via suffix immediately following the stem). Both in monolingual Swedish and in bilingual Finnish-Swedish speakers, correct stems with incorrect prepositions/case-endings were hardest to reject. This finding supports the view that the stem is indeed the dominant unit in meaning access of inflected words.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Cognitive Science, Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Minna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lehtonen
authors.affiliation: Department of Finnish, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Gabor
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Harrer
authors.affiliation: Department of Finnish, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Erling
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Wande
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Abo Akademi University, Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Matti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Laine
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012660:Semantics; D013548:Sweden; D055815:Young Adult