The speed of Processing of Transparent and non-transparent Head-last Endocentric Compounds in Persian

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Ph.D in Linguistics, Faculty of Literature, Alzahra University, Tehran, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics,Faculty of Literature, Alzahra university, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

This study is devoted to the investigation of the processing of head-final endocentric compounds in Persian with regard to its head based on the level of semantic transparency. Two conditions are considered semantically, transparent and opaque. Masked priming is used in this research. At first the compound word such as /kamardard/ (backache) was displayed as a primed word and then its head i.e. /dard/ (ache) was displayed as the target word. Two priming groups were considered: related and unrelated. These two groups were almost identical in terms of semantic transparency and structure. The average difference obtained from the response time between the related and unrelated groups was calculated for both opaque and transparent classes. The results showed the presence of facilitation both in the transparent group and in the opaque ones, and confirmed that transparent compounds have a significantly faster perception and processing process than opaque ones, according to the head.

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Main Subjects

References

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Linguistic Studies: Theory and Practice
Volume 4, Issue 1 - Serial Number 9
April 2025
Pages 131-152

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History

  • Receive Date: 08 March 2024
  • Revise Date: 19 July 2024
  • Accept Date: 28 August 2024

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