Processing French: A Psycholinguistic Perspective (Yale Language Series)

218 Pages·2005·0.81 MB·english

by  Peter Golato

Processing French

Processing
French
a psycholinguistic perspective
PETER GOLATO
University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign
Yale University Press New Haven and London
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Publisher:Mary Jane Peluso
Editor:Ann-Marie Imbornoni
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Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Golato,Peter,–
Processing French :a psycholinguistic perspective / Peter Golato
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
---(pbk.:alk.paper)
.French language—Psychological aspects.
.Psycholinguistics. I.Title.
. 
'.—dc 
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and
durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity ofthe Council on Library Resources.
         
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 
 Theories ofLanguage Processing 
 Priming and Priming Studies 
 Priming with Inflected French Verbs 
 From French Rules to French Words 
 Syntactic Priming with French Nouns 
 Syntactic Priming with French Verbs 
Conclusion 
Appendix 
Notes 
References 
Index 

Acknowledgments
Good ideas are rare and seldom spring forth out of nowhere,
while bad ideas seem to abound (in my case,anyway).I take
full responsibility for any bad ones that appear in this book,
while recognizing that the good ones will inevitably have had
their source in the work ofothers.
I owe a tremendous debt of thanks to those researchers
whose collective work inspired me to conduct the studies I offer
here.Their work tells a provocative and fascinating story about
the mental representation of words and sentences;I fervently
hope that I have relayed that story well.
I wish to thank the friends and colleagues who lent me
their support as I assembled the empirical portions of this
book.I thank the Department of French of the University of
Illinois for granting me a semester-long teaching release. I
thank David Birdsong for his encouragement as I embarked
on this project.I thank Viviane Ruellot for assisting me in sub-
ject recruitment and for lending me her voice in the creation
of stimulus items. And I am indebted to Jeff Magoto, Dana
Raymond,and all the Yamadians ofthe University ofOregon’s
Yamada Language Center for their warm hospitality and for
graciously allowing me testing space at their facility during the
summer of.
viii Acknowledgments
I am grateful for the encouraging feedback and com-
ments I have received on presentations ofportions ofthe work
described herein.In particular,I thank the audience attending
my fall presentation at the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaftof
the Department ofGermanic Languages and Literatures at the
University of Illinois,as well as the attendees of my presenta-
tion at the spring annual conference ofthe American As-
sociation of Applied Linguistics in Portland, Oregon. I also
wish to gratefully acknowledge my colleagues Alice Hadley
and Douglas Kibbee for reading drafts of the manuscript and
for providing invaluable feedback and suggestions for im-
provement.
I wish to acknowledge Fred Davidson and B. Kumara-
vadivelu for having agreed to be outside reviewers.I am espe-
cially grateful to Fred Davidson for his interest in my project.
Among the people at Yale University Press I especially wish to
thank are Mary Jane Peluso, for her encouragement and for
her confidence in my project, and Annie Imbornoni, for her
good humor and for her care and attention in editing my
manuscript.
Lastly,I owe my warmest and most sincere thanks to my
wife,Andrea,for all that she has been,is,and will be for me.I
dedicate this book to her,with love and gratitude.
Processing French