The morphosyntactic decomposition of Spanish verb-noun compounds: an ERP study

GATTEI, CAROLINA; MENÉNDEZ, JOAQUIN; WAINSELBOIM, ALEJANDRO; GÜEMES, MERCEDES; YORIO, ALBERTO

Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXXV Annual Meeting of the Argentinian Society for Neuroscience Research; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencias

The aim of this study is to investigate if Spanish verb-noun compounds, such aslavaplatos, are processed as unitary lexical units, or combinatorily through theirconstituents. Previous work has shown the importance of verb argument structure in theprocessing of these words (Güemes et al. 2019). In the present work, compounds wereclassified in two groups according to their semantic transparency: transparent orAgentives (AG), in which the referent takes the role of agent, and more opaque orMetaphorical (MET), which involve methaphorical patterns to construct their meaning. Alexical decision task was conducted with EEG recordings; the paradigm included twovisual presentation modes: as whole words (Standard presentation), or separated intotheir constituents (Split presentation). Behavioral results showed that in both conditionsAG compounds were responded significantly better and faster than MET words. An N400effect was found for both AG and MET, but was enhanced for MET words in bothpresentation modes. This finding supports the view that MET compounds aredecomposed into constituents. Therefore, semantic opacity of MET compounds does notseem to lead to differences in decomposition procedures: while in AG compounds themeaning of both constituents can be easily integrated to form compound meaning; inMET words, this procedure must be inhibited, and compound meaning accessed throughthe metaphoric relation that links both constituents.