No priming for Maltese word patterns in spoken word recognition

Abstract

As a Semitic language, Maltese exhibits root-and-pattern morphology, thus raising the question of whether roots and patterns provide cues that native speakers can exploit during word recognition. In this chapter, we focus on whether the pattern provides native speakers with cues that can facilitate spoken word recognition as has been previously found for visual word recognition (Galea 2011). We present a priming experiment designed to test whether the vocalic melody, prosodic CV structure, and the combination of these elements facilitates response times to auditorily presented target words, using the same auditory masked priming technique previously used for Maltese by Ussishkin et al. (2015). We find no such facilitation, thereby supporting models in which the pattern is not decomposed in the earliest stages of lexical access.