Project D-1

On Resolving Lexical and Postlexical Variations in Language Comprehension:
The Role of the Mental Lexicon

Project Abstract

The fundamental questions of this project have consistently been:

• what is the nature of the phonological representation in the mental lexicon and
• what is its role in resolving the problem of access and recognition of (morpho-) phonological variation?

Using psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic techniques, we examine the hypothesis that phonologically abstract mental representations guides the access and recognition processes of native speakers. Our predictions are based on the ternary mapping system spelt out within the FUL-model (Featurally Underspecified Lexicon). Focusing on segmental as well as featural specifications, our crosslinguistic experiments cover apects of German, Dutch, English (American and New Zealand), Bengali and Swedish.

Publications