A predicate word is grammatical term that refers to verbs and adjectives that embellish the subject in a sentence. In Korean, the understanding and generation of predicate words are the basis of sentence processing, making predicate words a critical c ...
A predicate word is grammatical term that refers to verbs and adjectives that embellish the subject in a sentence. In Korean, the understanding and generation of predicate words are the basis of sentence processing, making predicate words a critical component in sentence formation. The purpose of the current study is to identify the principles that are used to understand and generate Korean predicate words, and to find the form of representation in the mental lexicon as well as its processing characteristics, by utilizing psycholinguistic, computational linguistic and cognitive neuroscientific methodology.
The research contents from the Cognitive Neuroscience Research Team are as follows.
1. 1st Year: We collected various utterance data of anomic aphasia patients and conducted a series of studies in which we compared and contrasted the predicate words’ information processing and the information processing of noun phrases.
2. 2nd year: To observe the aphasia patients’ information processing patterns more in depth, we conducted a series of experiments in which the relevance between short-term memory, movement execution abilities and spatial cognitive functions were observed.
The research contents from the Computational Linguistics Research Team are as follows.
1. Development of a stimuli candidate extraction tool:
In order to reduce the stimulus encoding time for behavioral tasks, we developed a tool to extract words from word bundles that could be used as stimuli.
2. Construction of Korean predicate vocabulary acquisition computation model:
Built an automatic computation model for Korean lexical knowledge acquisition, which can simulate the lexicon acquisition process, and conducted experiments based on the model.
3. Construction of the Computation-based model for Korean predicate word understanding: Utilizing the results from the 2nd year research, construct a computation-based model for understanding Korean predicate words, which we can simulate the human lexical understanding process, and conducted a lexical decision task (LDT) experiment. We are currently developing the computation model for Korean predicate word generation.
The research contents from the Psycholinguistics Research Team are as follows.
1. Comparison of lexical information processes of verb & noun word phrases:
No differences were found between verb and noun generation processes in recognition tasks, picture-naming tasks and delayed naming tasks.
2. Research of verb word phrases’ representation form as well as processing procedure:
A series of studies with native Korean speakers and bilingual speakers were conducted, and the results showed that verb phrases are represented separately in the form of "stem + pre-final ending + ending".
3. Identification of compound verbs’ form of representation:
Through studies which aimed at verifying whether or not compound verbs’ form of representation is integrated into whole word phrases, or if the representation is separated into the compositional morphemes, we found that compound verbs have dual representations, represented by both fullist and decompositional representations.
4. Korean syllable-representation research:
In order to verify the existence of syllable-representation in Korean word-phrase processing, we used lexical decision tasks, word naming tasks and word translation tasks to identify the effects of syllables.
The current research results of the project will provide a Cognitive Neuroscientific basis for Korean information processing, and the models proposed will contribute in various fields, such as language education, language disorder evaluations, as well as speech therapy related areas.