The mental representation of nouns derived from verbs (nominalizations)
What is it about?
Nominalizations, which are verbs derived from nouns (e.g. 'thought' derived from 'thinking'), may be stored in their full form in the mental lexicon, or in pieces (morphemes). Because they come in regular and irregular forms, they may also be stored using both systems. We used a priming study to see if verbs prime the nominalizations derived from them more strongly than semantic (overlap in meaning) and phonological (sound similar) primes. We found a stronger priming effect for the morphological primes for both regular and irregular nominalizations. This is indicates that these nominalizations are stored as morphemes. However, this evidence is not conclusive, as the priming effect found may also be the result of a combination of semantic and phonological priming.
Why is it important?
In the discussion about how words are represented in the mental lexicon, the focus is usually on verbs and their past tense forms. By studying nominalizations, we broaden the understanding of the underlying mechanisms for how all regular and irregular words are stored. Also, a lot of studies on this topic have been done on the English language, here we studied the Dutch language. This again provides insight into these mechanisms, that may or may not work the same for all languages