[lingtalks] Adam Ussishkin 10/1 (Linguistics Colloquium)

[Klinton Bicknell]

On Monday 1 October at 3pm, Adam Ussishkin (University of Arizona; 
http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~ussishkin/ ) will give a colloquium at the 
UCSD Linguistics Department, in AP&M 4301.

:: Abstract ::

/*Psycholinguistic Evidence for a Hybrid Theory of the Semitic Lexicon*/

Competing views of the structure of the Semitic lexicon differ crucially 
in whether they recognize the consonantal root as the main 
organizational unit. Beginning with McCarthy (1979, 1981), the 
traditional root-based approach formalizes this organization, while more 
recently, the word-based approach (Bat-El 1994, 2003, Ussishkin 1999, 
2005) eschews any reference to the root.

In this talk, results from several auditory lexical decision experiments 
on Hebrew and Maltese are considered. These experiments manipulated the 
following variables: verbal class (also known as binyan in Hebrew, and 
theme in Maltese), lexicality, word frequency, and morphological family 
size. The results of these experiments are not consistent with either a 
root-only or word-only model. Rather, they support a hybrid model in 
which whole words are lexically stored but organized in root-based families.

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For further information about the Linguistics department colloquia 
series, including the schedule of future events, please visit 
http://ling.ucsd.edu/events/colloquia.html .