Words can be decomposed into smaller meaningful units, known as morphemes (e.g., BUILD–ER). Available data suggest this to happen in rightfully complex words (e.g., deal-er), pseudo-complex words (e.g., corn-er), and also when the stimulus is a nonword composed of a real stem and a real affix (e.g., chair-er). On the contrary, the absence of an affix (e.g., cash-ew) seems to result in a lack of decomposition. Are affixes necessary to trigger morphological analysis?

Access to word meaning outside of awareness is generally accepted now, at least as indexed by masked priming. Yet, it is not clear what kind of information is grasped subliminally, and whether the mechanisms underlying conscious and unconscious semantic processing are the same. Here, we address  this issue by comparing the state-of-art Distributional Semantic Model (DSM), found to successfully predict a wide range of language-related phenomena, with Pointwise Mutual Information (PMI), a measure of association between words based on their mere co-occurrence in language use.

The temporal dynamics of spoken word recognition are highly debated. While some studies suggest serial processing of sublexical and lexico-semantic information (e.g., Kocagoncu et al., 2017), others reported parallel processing since early stages (e.g., Lewis & Poeppel, 2014). The current study employed multiple linear regression to predict MEG-evoked responses in 20 native Italian speakers during the semantic judgment of 438 Italian spoken words.