Entropy measures and predictive recognition as mirrored in gating and lexical decision over multimorphemic Hungarian noun forms

Abstract

Our paper is an attempt to indicate the relevance of information theoretical accounts to understand word recognition and morphological processing in Hungarian, along with other studies using more traditional predictors like linear position and morphological composition. The first two experiments were gating studies. The effect of the decision points was only evident in frequent words. The correct recognition means for the recognition points differ from the means for one-before-recognition points, indicating that the recognition point follows a sudden drop of the entropy value. This shows how entropy measures can be used to predict word recognition in actual language performance. The next two experiments examined the word reconstruction effect. A clear bathtub effect (Aitchison, 1987) was obtained: reconstruction was highest in the cases where both the beginning and the end were correct. The last, lexical decision based study used four basic morphological types of markers (plural, second and first possessive) and three types of case (-nak,-ban-,-ra ?DAT, INSIDE, ONTO). The main effect of the frequency and the error type was significant. Frequent words were judged faster but less accurately, suggesting a trade-off. The later the mistake is, the faster and easier its rejection was.