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A common problem in displaying within-subject data is that of how to show confidence intervals that accurately reflect the pattern of significant differences between conditions. The Cousineau-Morey method \parencite {c05,m08} is a widely used solution to this issue; however, this method only applies to experimental designs with only one repeated-measures factor (e.g., subjects). Many experimental designs in fields such as psycholinguistics and social psychology use crossed random effect designs where, e.g., there are repeated measures both for subjects and stimuli. For such designs, extant methods for showing within-subject intervals would require first aggregating over stimuli, and thus such intervals might be a less accurate reflection of the statistical significance patterns if the data are actually analyzed using a method that takes both random effects into account (e.g., linear mixed-effects models). The present paper proposes an extension of the method described above to address this problem; the proposal is to scale the data using a mixed-effects model, rather than using the means from each subject, and then calculate confidence intervals from the data scaled thusly. Analysis of a sample of crossed random effect datasets reveals that intervals calculated using this method give a slightly more accurate reflection of the pattern of statistical significance in the between-condition differences.

This paper investigates the syntactic structure of so-called genitive-possessive DPs in Uyghur, a Turkic language. Uyghur genitive-possessives bear suffixes on both the “possessing” entity (comparable to the Saxon genitive ’s in English) and the “possessed” one. The suffix on the “possessor”, -ning, is considered a genitive case marker; the suffix on the “possessed” has multiple allomorphs and is considered an agreement marker that agrees in person and number with the “possessor”. Based on the multiplicity of semantic roles that the “possessing” object may bear, and the observation that it may be dropped from the DP, an analogy is made between genitive-possessive DPs and finite TPs. It is proposed that “possessors” behave in a manner parallel to that of subjects of TPs: they are introduced by a quasi-functional head n or within a gerund, and raise to [Spec,DP] to receive genitive case from D. The agreement suffix, on the other hand, is treated as the phonological realization of an Agr head that is introduced with unvalued phi-features, features which are valued when the “possessing” entity passes through the specifier of AgrP. Adopting this structure can explain data on the realization of definiteness in genitive and non-genitive DPs, and the distribution of adverbials within gerunds.

The present study tested whether listeners hearing one form of a morpheme activate other forms of the same morpheme. Listeners performed lexical decisions while hearing Mandarin monosyllables; crucially, critical targets could be primed by related syllables that occurred 18–52 trials earlier (long-lag priming). The use of long-lag priming ensures that any facilitation effects are due to morphological relatedness and not to semantic or form relationships, which do not prime lexical decisions at long lags. Across three experiments (total N = 458), we consistently found that lexical decisions were primed when the same pronunciation of a morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiL – shiL) but were not primed when two different variants of the same morpheme occurred as prime and target (e.g., shiR – shiL, where both of these syllables are potential pronunciations of the same morpheme). In other words, we observed identity priming but not morphological priming, unlike other long-lag priming experiments, which almost invariably observe intramodal morphological priming if they test it. This surprising finding suggests that there are boundary conditions on the elicitation of long-lag morphological priming effects.

Differential affective processing has been widely documented for bilinguals: L1 affective words elicit higher levels of arousal and stronger emotionality ratings than L2 affective words (Pavlenko, 2012). In this study, we focus on two closely related Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, whose affective lexicons are highly overlapping, with shared lexical items that only differ in pronunciation across languages. We recorded L1 Cantonese – L2 Mandarin bilinguals' pupil responses to auditory tokens of Cantonese and Mandarin affective words. Our results showed that Cantonese–Mandarin bilinguals had stronger pupil responses when the affective words were pronounced in Cantonese (L1) than when the same words were pronounced in Mandarin (L2). The effect was most evident in taboo words and among bilinguals with lower L2 proficiency. We discuss the theoretical implications of the findings in the frameworks of exemplar theory and models of the bilingual lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hearing a word that was already expected often facilitates comprehension, attenuating the amplitude of the N400 event-related brain potential component. On the other hand, hearing a word that was not expected elicits a larger N400. In the present study, we examined whether the N400 would be attenuated when a person hears something that is not exactly what they expected but is a viable alternative pronunciation of the morpheme they expected. This was done using Mandarin syllables, some of which can be pronounced with different lexical tones depending on the context. In two large-sample experiments (total n = 160) testing syllables in isolation and in phonologically viable contexts, we found little evidence that hearing an alternative pronunciation of the expected word attenuates the N400. These results suggest that comprehenders do not take advantage of their knowledge about systematic phonological alternations during the early stages of prediction or discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]