What can we learn from the morphology of Hebrew? A masked-priming investigation of morphological representation.

TLDR

All Hebrew words are composed of a triconsonantal root and a phonological word pattern. The study investigates how Hebrew roots and word patterns are represented lexically using masked priming. The authors examined lexical representations of roots and patterns via masked priming and proposed a working model of Hebrew lexical organization. When primes shared the same word pattern as targets, no facilitation occurred, whereas root primes facilitated lexical decisions and naming of derived targets; this effect was independent of semantic similarity, indicating that Hebrew roots are lexical units while word patterns are not.

Abstract

All Hebrew words are composed of 2 interwoven morphemes: a triconsonantal root and a phonological word pattern. the lexical representations of these morphemic units were examined using masked priming. When primes and targets shared an identical word pattern, neither lexical decision nor naming of targets was facilitated. In contrast root primes facilitated both lexical decisions and naming of target words that were derived from these roots. This priming effect proved to be independent of meaning similarity because no priming effects were found when primes and targets were semantically but not morphologically related. These results suggest that Hebrew roots are lexical units whereas word patterns are not. A working model of lexical organization in Hebrew is offered on the basis of these results.