Learning, Consolidating, and Generalising Novel Morphology
type: CreativeWork
description: Despite a central role for morphological knowledge in supporting linguistic generalisation, the neural representations supporting its learning remain largely unexplored. This thesis addressed this gap by exploring the role of memory consolidation in morphological learning and generalisation. In three experiments, adult participants learned an artificial language in which stems (e.g. gleet, shiln) combined with plural affixes (e.g. –aff, -opp; gleetaff, shilnopp) to refer to the occupation of multiple male and female characters. Mimicking properties of morphological systems in natural languages, the plurals varied in their phonological consistency/ambiguity and type/token frequency. Two sets of plurals, distinguished by gender, were trained on two successive days. Experiment 1 revealed that generalisation to novel phonologically ambiguous forms measured on the second day showed a greater influence of token frequency for plurals trained on the previous day, suggesting overnight changes in their underlying representations. Experiment 2 examined this effect further by using fMRI to compare the neural representations underlying plurals learned on the day of scanning or on the previous day. Representational Similarity Analysis revealed increased similarity structure among high type frequency plurals and reduced similarity structure among high token frequency plurals following overnight consolidation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). These results are consistent with a Complementary Learning Systems (CLS) model in which overnight consolidation supports the development of overlapping representations among several items sharing the same feature (here, an affix; type frequency) and strengthens item-specific representations for frequently occurring items (token frequency). Additionally, connectivity analyses showed that the functional coupling between the left STG and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was weaker for high type frequency plurals and stronger for h…
abstract: Despite a central role for morphological knowledge in supporting linguistic generalisation, the neural representations supporting its learning remain largely unexplored. This thesis addressed this gap by exploring the role of memory consolidation in morphological learning and generalisation. In three experiments, adult participants learned an artificial language in which stems (e.g. gleet, shiln) combined with plural affixes (e.g. –aff, -opp; gleetaff, shilnopp) to refer to the occupation of multiple male and female characters. Mimicking properties of morphological systems in natural languages, the plurals varied in their phonological consistency/ambiguity and type/token frequency. Two sets of plurals, distinguished by gender, were trained on two successive days. Experiment 1 revealed that generalisation to novel phonologically ambiguous forms measured on the second day showed a greater influence of token frequency for plurals trained on the previous day, suggesting overnight changes in their underlying representations. Experiment 2 examined this effect further by using fMRI to compare the neural representations underlying plurals learned on the day of scanning or on the previous day. Representational Similarity Analysis revealed increased similarity structure among high type frequency plurals and reduced similarity structure among high token frequency plurals following overnight consolidation in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG). These results are consistent with a Complementary Learning Systems (CLS) model in which overnight consolidation supports the development of overlapping representations among several items sharing the same feature (here, an affix; type frequency) and strengthens item-specific representations for frequently occurring items (token frequency). Additionally, connectivity analyses showed that the functional coupling between the left STG and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was weaker for high type frequency plurals and stronger for h…
author: Vinals-Castonguay, Lydia
language: en
keywords: Learning, memory consolidation, generalisation, inflectional morphology, fMRI
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/903530db-e954-495e-b15e-5b8679836118/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2018-04-04
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:28Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.22073