Research in English Language Teaching

I am happy to have contributed to 'Research in English Language Teaching'. Read the full paper at http://www.conscientiabeam.com/pdf-files/art/179/RELT20212(1)15-32.pdf!

 

 

Interview with student magazine Pi

To celebrate Brain Awareness Week 2021 (15th-21st March) and World Poetry Day (21st March), I was interviewed by the student magazine Pi from University College London about my experience of writing 'Multilingual Neuropoetry'. I share with the interviewers my inspiration for writing the book, the challenges I faced during the process, and why scientists and non-scientists will be equally intrigued by 'Multilingual Neuropoetry'. The link to the interview is on the Pi website. Here is the full extended version of the interview, in which I also share with you what our brain has got to do with our gut, and how you can become truly creative.

 

 

Book Interview: Dr Jayanthiny Kangatharan

 

By Laura Riggall & Rachel Dumbrell

 

Could you please tell us about your new book, Multilingual Neuropoetry?

 

I wrote my book Multilingual Neuropoetry to explain and explore diverse neuroscientific phenomena through a poetic lens. You find my poetry on the brain and the mind covering themes such as neurophysiology, neurology and consciousness. Multilingual Neuropoetry also attempts to answer questions we usually ask ourselves revolving around our human existence, and the very essence that makes us human.

 

What inspired you to link neuroscience and poetry, and where did the inspiration for Multilingual Neuropoetry come from?

 

I have always liked poetry, and with my extensive background in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, it was only a matter of time that my creative self would connect the romantic feel of poetry with the unembellished reality of neuroscience. The idea of neuropoetry is as old as humankind itself, and if you look around, you will find several books on this topic, none of which, however, actually establishes the idea in a formal way. I decided to create Multilingual Neuropoetry to define the idea, give science an artistic expression, and art a scientific expression, and make neuropoetry accessible to multilingual audiences. Multilingual Neuropoetry therefore introduces everyone to neuropoetry in a tangible and an easy-to-grasp manner.

 

There are many interesting elements to Multilingual Neuropoetry. Could you explain why you chose to make the book multilingual, and what dimension this adds for the reader?

 

Usually if you read or listen to poetry in a language, your mind is taken on a poetic journey in which you start to become creative in that language. I chose to provide a multilingual layer to the book to expand the reader’s creative potential and encourage them to transform from a reader to a writer by inspiring them to pen a poem in a non-native language, and in their native language if English is not their first language. I hope this adds a layer of fun, and intrigue to the reader/writer experience.

 

Creativity is the language of our soul, and so creativity isn’t confined to just any one human language. This means you can express yourself creatively in any human language you want. So in a sense, you can say poetry is a feeling that you can put in word using multiple colours and flavours. Each colour or flavour is like a different language with its own deep rhythm, rich sound, vivid tone, exotic feel and fine shades of meaning that allow your soul to creatively express itself in a unique way. Reading a poem in English will therefore feel different to reading a poem in Italian, and so it will naturally leave a different sensation or taste on your mind, or feeling on your soul so to speak.

 

What kind of research did you do for the book, and how long did you spend researching before starting the writing process?

 

My research came from my readings and studies on the mind and the brain that I did during my undergrad, postgrad, doctoral and postdoc years and my time spent teaching. Unbeknownst to me then, I didn’t know that this would help me become familiar with the material around which I would later create my neuropoetry. Ten years into my studies, I started writing neuropoetry because when I joined a local writers’ group I wanted to have something to present and get feedback on. Once I realised that neuropoetry is a concept that many people might find fascinating, I decided to create a book since it would serve them as a good introduction. I spent another four years of research, which is when the book actually started to take shape because it was during this time that I did the actual writing. When creating a poem on a topic that I previously had been exposed to, my research therefore was already done in that sense because of my prior reading. When writing on a new topic, I would spend a few hours reading about it before starting writing.

 

What were the biggest challenges you faced writing Multilingual Neuropoetry?

 

One big challenge I faced writing Multilingual Neuropoetry was thinking that I had finished writing, just to find out later that it’d be good to add more detail. This happened to me several times throughout the writing process. The book initially was supposed to be a light reading including just poetry until someone pointed out that it would be worth considering having some notes for each poem to explain how neuroscience and poetry come together in each poem. I therefore created multiple revisions. Naturally my book grew in size, and I couldn’t resist adding some more poetry as well. Receiving the valuable input of so many different supporters while working on my book who pointed me in the right direction to improve the reader experience has been a really humbling experience. I’m therefore incredibly grateful to all of my contributors who helped me rediscover the beauty of my book through their eyes.

 

Another challenge was choosing an appropriate front cover. I created several covers, and I nearly had chosen a black and white image. It was not until a year later that I went ahead with a colourful picture, which is the one you can see now. This picture represents the brain in an artistic way with the different colours signifying the different languages in which I express my poetry about the brain. I’m glad I waited for the right cover to reveal itself and I am also thankful for the input of a good friend who confirmed the choice because this picture perfectly fits the purpose of the book as it nicely ties in the themes of science, languages and art.

 

How does Multilingual Neuropoetry appeal to both neuroscientists and non-neuroscientists alike? What kind of person would Multilingual Neuropoetry appeal to?

 

Neuroscientists might find this book interesting because Multilingual Neuropoetry introduces them to a creative way in which neuroscience can be viewed, accessed and explained. In that sense, it might help them clarify their own research to members of the public in a fun and engaging way. Multilingual Neuropoetry therefore serves as an inspiration and a resource that they could use as part of their public outreach or science communication strategies, activities and endeavours.

 

Non-neuroscientists might find this book worth reading because it piques their curiosity about how we ‘tick’. It helps you understand different ideas in psychology and neuroscience using your creativity to gain insights into how your brain works. It invites you to enrich your mind by going into unexpected depth. At the same time you learn about different poetic ways that will inspire you to express yourself and share with others how your brain makes you feel in whichever language you choose.

 

Multilingual Neuropoetry therefore is a great book for any open-minded person who wants to know more about their mind and brain in a creative way, and who doesn’t shy away from learning something new to challenge themselves, expand their creative vision and share it with others.

 

At its heart Multilingual Neuropoetry is about the creative potential of our brain. It is about the endless creative possibilities that we can discover if we go beyond what we know. I sincerely hope reading my book will help readers critically question reality as we know it in order to empower them to think for themselves so they can expand their consciousness and ultimately create their own reality.

 

What advice would you give to students with an interest in creative writing?

 

I would encourage them to write regularly, and jot down any creative bits and pieces that enter their mind. You would be surprised what you can come up with! I would also advise them to join their local creative writing group. This will open your mind towards exploring different avenues of creative writing, be it short stories, poetry or novels, and help you find the one that allows you to express yourself freely.

 

It is also worth attending and performing at open-mic events, be it in person or online, to expose yourself to new ideas and new audiences. Listening to others will help you connect with other creative individuals, expand your imagination, and develop your writing in new directions. Sharing your enthusiasm about creativity with like-minded individuals in a more dynamic space is also lots of fun! When you captivate the audience with your originality… it truly is a magical moment! Your unique touch will make your performance memorable and leave your audience inspired.

 

Reading Multilingual Neuropoetry emphasised some of the creative ways in which neuroscience can be explored. Do you have any ideas for future creative works?

 

With creativity you have got the power to change the way ideas are perceived, and therefore to change the perception of others thereby redefining reality and extending the realms of diverse possibilities. With your creativity you can therefore rediscover of what a concept, an entire field, or your reality truly means to you, how it relates to you and how you can share your new understanding of it with others.

 

There are different creative ways to uncover the many possibilities in which a concept or field can be rediscovered. Neuropoetry is one way to express the concept of neuroart, that is to combine art and neuroscience, in a literary way, and there have been other attempts to explore neuroscience using visual artworks in form of paintings, sculptures, ceramic work or pottery. Other ways could be to take the wonders of the brain or take neurological accounts and express them in form of photography, nonfictional novels or short stories, creative writing, songs, musicals, plays or movies through which we can come to appreciate the beauty of our brain and understand what it is like to live with a certain condition. It is also possible to mix the different artistic media, and see what you can come up with using your originality to express yourself creatively. But there is more you can do to express yourself beyond 3D.

 

Have you got an idea of how we could express our creativity beyond 3D?

 

To me the ultimate expression of our creativity happens when we expand our consciousness.

Creativity is to manifest what our soul sees because creativity is essentially how our soul expresses itself. Neuroscience with its limited methods has yet to address the role our soul plays in our life and I talk about this issue in more detail in Multilingual Neuropoetry. It is unlikely that this question will ever be addressed in the field of neuroscience because you cannot compute the soul. It’s a God-given gift that bestows upon us the miracle of life. You cannot use 3D methods to explain a 5D concept. Our nervous system is the vehicle for our soul to help our body navigate life in 3D. With our souls comes the life force to express our heart’s desires and our emotions. Emotion is nothing but energy in motion that is our soul in action.

 

It is well-known that much of our brain is involved in representing information that we acquire from our different sensory receptors, but most of our brain processing is actually unconscious. This means brain sciences are barely even touching upon the surface of what actually ‘drives’ us. Many have suggested, for example, that our vision is nothing but a grand illusion, and I talk about it in more detail in Multilingual Neuropoetry.

 

Because of the limited nature of our existing methods to address this unconscious activity, you can say that we are literally tapping around in the dark. Remember that the word ‘science’ comes from the Latin ‘scire’ meaning ‘to know’. It’s all about knowing, and finding another piece to the puzzle in the mystery that we call the brain. The problem starts when the different pieces don’t add up. However, this is to be expected because with the existing methods we can only focus on what is ‘visible’ in 3D; that is what we are consciously ‘conscious’ of while we are missing most of the picture that is the rest, which is ‘invisible’ to us because it is unconscious since most of our brain processing is unconscious.

 

Why do you think in our daily life we are not consciously aware of most of our brain processing?

 

The way we are living our life at the moment doesn’t allow us to be fully conscious because our attention, focus and perception are tied to what is happening in our 3D state of mind. This means we are not functioning to our fullest capacity because we are ‘asleep’ when it comes to our higher conscious state of our being. I talk about the idea of life being a dream in Multilingual Neuropoetry, and what happens when we actually ‘wake up’. This means that only when we expand our consciousness beyond 3D by aligning ourselves with our best version of ourselves in 5D so to speak, can we become ‘awake’ from our dream-like state. By aligning yourself with your higher self, you will actually break free of this 3D programming where you are being brainfed everyday with what to believe or what to do and you will literally shine light upon the fact that we truly have got the power inside of us to create our own reality to fulfil our true purpose that we are meant to do. This is the ultimate expression of what it means to be creative because you are allowing your soul to be free, to speak for itself and to fulfil its purpose.

 

Expanding our consciousness and raising our awareness is the moment that we leave the world of knowledge behind and enter the sphere of truth, because it is only then that we will shine light upon what has been previously ‘invisible’ to us. We fully step into our own power and the truth will resonate with who we truly are and what we are supposed to do.

 

What can we do in our everyday life to expand our level of consciousness?

 

You need to be truthful with yourself about whether you are living with an elevated sense of consciousness. One step to do this is to ask yourself in your daily life whenever you are doing something or you ‘think’ you are working: whom or what are you serving with what you are doing? Are you living in a 3D reality or are you actually living how you are supposed to live according to your higher self? Dissect your reality. Question it. Follow your gut instinct and the truth will reveal itself. Many of us don’t know that our brain is very intimately connected to our gastrointestinal tract. Our gut is not only the greatest digestive and endocrine organ in our body but also houses our enteric nervous system, and as it is relatively independent of our brain, our gut can be considered a ‘brain’ in itself. In Multilingual Neuropoetry I talk in more detail about how through our intimate gut-brain connection our emotions can cause symptoms in our gut, and why inversely we need to treat our gut well because what goes on in our gut can influence our mind and behaviour. We need to ensure that our brain works in sync with our heart and our gut.

 

To expand our level of consciousness, we need to become better observers of reality and of ourselves. When our processing of reality is subliminal, which happens when our brain activity is evoked by something that is below our awareness, this information is inaccessible to our awareness. When you notice something, and it doesn’t feel right in your gut, become aware of what it is that you are doing, and why you are doing it. Our conscious awareness occurs when there is sufficient salience of what you noticed as not right. Our top-down attention amplifies signals so that the signals exceed the threshold for awareness and you can actually ‘see’ by fine-tuning your awareness what is true and what is not. We therefore need to ensure that we let our gut guide us in expressing our heart energy and let our brain follow. Only then can we heighten our level of awareness of why we are doing what we are doing, and share our insights with others. Only by consciously expanding our perspective on what we are actually doing with our life can we ultimately fulfil our true purpose.

'Multilingual Neuropoetry' Review by The Psychologist

Today a review of my book 'Multilingual Neuropoetry' was published by the magazine of the British Psychological Society known as The Psychologist on their website.

 

 

The review touches upon the unique aspects that the book tries to convey by integrating neuroscience and poetry through the idea of neuropoetry in multiple languages. Here is the review in full:

 

"Dr Kangatharan created this book to give scientists the opportunity to express their artistic voice, and artists the opportunity to express their scientific voice. Kangatharan’s book is novel in two ways: she has created poems in several languages all centred around neuroscientific phenomena, and she has presented them in the form of riddles. 

I hadn’t heard of ‘neuropoetry’ before reading Kangatharan’s work, but the term is not new. Essentially, Kangatharan explained, neuropoetry is the use of poetry as an outlet to discuss natural phenomena that occur in the human mind and brain. Both poetry and neuroscience can be used as means to broaden our understanding of human nature and our sense of existence. Prior to reading the book I believed that neuroscience and poetry were two separate entities. Through detailed explanations and in-depth analysis, I now see that science and art are not that different – they both ultimately try to understand human nature.

The poems in Kangatharan’s book cover a broad range of neuroscientific phenomena. The neurological disorder epilepsy is described through a cinquain (a five-line poem classified by the number of syllables on each line), the hypothalamus is described through a triolet (a poem of eight lines in which the first line is repeated as the fourth and seventh and the second line as the eighth) and the concept of the Ruh (soul in Arabic) as an epigram (a short and witty poem that can take the form of only one line).

Perhaps the most striking feature of Kangatharan’s neuropoems is the fact that she caters to a multilingual audience – she is the first to do so in the neuropoetry field. Monolingual readers are given a general prose translation of each poem.

It’s clear to see Kangatharan’s passion for neuropoetry, as she discusses her drive to promote the idea with the British Neuroscience Association and connect with other like-minded poets. She has also undertaken extensive background research to understand how different cultures use poetry in different ways. Readers are encouraged to use the book as a springboard to either write their own neuropoem or to learn more about neuroscience.

-        Reviewed by Billan Omar, Class Teacher, Earlsmead Primary School"

Here is the link to the original full review 

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/uncovering-human-nature-through-neuropoetry 

If you're interested in buying the book at a discount, it is now available at ten per cent off at the following link

https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/dr-jayanthiny-kangatharan/multilingual-neuropoetry/paperback/product-19eymz59.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Neuropoetry and STEM

Art is a great way to introduce children to science. Neuropoetry, for example is an exciting way in which children can learn about their brain by engaging in poetry. I remember when I held my first ever neuropoetry session at a primary school during Brain Awareness Week and Science Week UK last year.

Specifically, on the 12^th March 2019 I had the pleasure as STEM ambassador to introduce children at East Acton Primary School in a fun activity to the world of neuroscience. This activity was very special to me as it was based on my very first book called ‘Multilingual Neuropoetry’ that I was launching at the beginning of Brain Awareness Week. This book, which is the first book about poetry on the brain and the mind presented in multiple languages, dissects a variety of topics from the field of neuroscience by using poetry as a tool. The activity that I did with 8 and 9 year old children in two classes aimed in a simple way to help them familiarise with the basic structures of the nervous systems and the way our senses work. I emailed the teachers the materials on poetry and neuroscience beforehand so that I could ensure they were at the appropriate level at which children could understand them. The school kindly did provide me with the printed materials at the beginning of each session.

At the school I was warmly greeted by the teachers who led me to the classes. It was a great feeling to meet the many young children in each class who were eager to learn about the brain. I started my session with the question whether they knew what week it was. Although everyone knew it was Science Week, their facial expressions did reveal surprise when I told them that it was also Brain Awareness Week. So I happily continued with a brief introduction on the study of the brain. I then explained how neuroscience can be expressed in both prose and poetry, and gave a handout on simple poetry types with which they could familiarise themselves. Afterwards we went through an example of a shape poem to illustrate how simple neuroscientific insights or facts could be articulated using poetry. I then handed out the information on neuroscience, and the teachers and I spent the rest of the session helping each and every child with creating their first neuropoem. Similar to the neuropoems presented in my book ‘Multilingual Neuropoetry’, each neuropoem was created with a twist in that a neuropoem can be presented as a neuropoetic riddle the answer to which will tell you what the poem is all about.

It was an amazing experience to see how everyone was challenging themselves to pen a poem based on the insights on the brain that they found most fascinating and that they were excited to share with others. Despite each session only being 45 minutes in length, everyone did a marvellous job at creating a piece by the end of the session that expressed their thoughts on the brain using poetry. It filled me with joy to see children’s faces glow with excitement when they were presenting their first neuropoems at the end of each session and engage the rest of the class with their fun, inventive and unique neuropoetic riddles.

All in all, I found my experience of this new activity with the teachers and children rewarding and invigorating, and as a thank-you I left a copy of my book ‘Multilingual Neuropoetry’ with the school. Later that evening, when promoting my book live on air, I was happy to share my first neuropoetry experience with the school on local radio, and to thank STEM, the teachers, children and the East Acton Primary School for facilitating this new activity during Brain Awareness Week and Science Week UK.

If you are interested in finding out more about my book ‘Multilingual Neuropoetry’, which is available on Amazon and at a discount on lulu.com, please check out the interview I did for this year's Brain Awareness Week at Radio Harrow!

 

THE ART OF THE BRAIN

What do painters and neuroscientists have in common? As the painters and artists among us know, both painters and neuroscientists have a strong interest in uncovering the laws by which the brain paints a picture of reality. Though painters’ techniques clearly differ from the scientific method, by understanding and playing with neurologic and perceptual rules, painters have intuitively revealed secrets of the visual brain.

Engaging in art can allow you to gain insights into how visual perception arises. Leonardo da Vinci is one prime example of a painter and scientist who studied gradual changes in light to understand the visual perception of form and depth. In fact, Helmholtz emphasised during his lecture in 1871 how artists should be viewed as investigators who through numerous observations and experiments create work that due to its vividness and accuracy manifests a series of pertinent facts that physiologists cannot ignore. According to Harvard psychologist Patrick Cavanagh, artists are indeed neuroscientists in that they understand how the visual brain uses a basic approach to see the world, which can be reflected onto the canvas in ways that are invisible to the viewer.

These observations can strike a chord with us when we believe painting is essentially seeing, mentally and physically playing with colours, contours and contrasts. When you stand in front of one of the many Stillleben in the Borghese Gallery in Rome, the artist in you will mentally decompose the painting and recreate it to meaningfully understand the painter’s use of perspective, colours and light.

It is clear that art is a truly unique way of viewing the world that is distinct from the scientific method. By understanding how art engages us at different levels such as emotion, cognition and intellect, any information revealed can help us, when integrated with the scientific perspective, to create a better understanding of reality. Thus, by training your eye to dissect reality via engaging in art, the creative process will give you insights into the construction of visual perception. To help you pick up your painting brush to get you started on your first artwork, you can have a look at various close-ups depicting different structures of the nervous system to inspire you to focus your eye on the true beauty of the brain!

Thus, while the relationship between neuroscience and art can be studied by how art is perceived by the brain, i.e. how we hear sounds, view colours and feel rhythm, it is equally useful to consider the brain through the lens of art. By studying the brain during the execution of art, art will present itself as a reflection of the inner neural scenery of one’s subjective experience. This branch of the interdisciplinary field termed as neuroaesthetics by Semir Zeki, is known as John Onians’ idea of ‘Neuroarthistory’. It can be studied to better understand artistic aspects such as style, and more complex questions such as what the origin of art is. By observing and appreciating your consciousness first-hand while engaging in artistic activities, you can experience how your nervous system is giving rise to art.

While we are at the topic of art and the brain, is it true that music can help us improve our thought processes? While previous research has debunked the myth of the ‘Mozart effect’, which first came to the surface in a Nature report in 1993 that claimed listening to Mozart for 10 minutes enhanced participants’ performance on spatial tasks, recent evidence suggests there is an effect of music training on IQ development in developing brains. According to a study at the Northwestern University in Chicago, learning to play music helps children toward the development of a neurophysiological distinction between certain sounds, which can help them with their literacy. Active engagement and participation in creating music, specifically, predicted neural processing strength after music lessons. Moreover, when coupled with consistency in attending music training, active class participation was revealed to lead to enhanced effects on speech processing and reading scores.

As an adult, could you still expect to see any benefits if you take up an instrument late in life? Luckily, the answer is yes! A study at the University of South Florida that looked into the impact of piano training on adults aged between 60-85 demonstrated how after 6 months of piano training recipients of lessons improved in verbal fluency, planning, memory and pace at which information is processed in contrast to non-recipients of piano lessons.

No matter if you never played an instrument or have not played music in decades, it is undeniable that the power of music impacts on more than our cognitive and emotional development. As the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran said ‘Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife’.

Moreover, creating art provides ample mental health benefits such as relieving stress, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety. It can serve as a vehicle for alleviating the burden of chronic disease. Engagement with art can also stimulate creative thinking, and increase brain connectivity and plasticity. Apart from painting and music, other ways to engage with art include movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing. Writing poetry, specifically, encourages emotional and intellectual growth as it involves the symbolic representation of experience through language. Engaging in writing poetry therefore lets the inner poet in you express how your brain makes you feel.

There are endless creative possibilities to express yourself. Creativity is the language of our soul, and so our creativity isn’t confined to just any one human language. This means you can express yourself creatively in any human language you want. So in a sense poetry is a feeling that you can put in word using multiple colours and flavours. Each colour or flavour is like a different language with its own deep rhythm, rich sound, vivid tone, exotic feel and fine shades of meaning that allow your soul to creatively express itself in a unique way. Reading a poem in English will therefore feel different to reading a poem in Italian, and so it will naturally leave a different sensation or taste on your mind, or feeling on your soul so to speak. On that note, why not have a go at writing your first poem!?

Celebrate National Poetry Day with Multilingual Neuropoetry!

Check out 'Multilingual Neuropoetry' as today is National Poetry Day!

 

As today is National Poetry Day, I am happy to announce that the fully revised content of my book 'Multilingual Neuropoetry' is now available on Amazon, Barnes& Nobles etc, and is also now available at lulu.com at a discount, which expires by the end of this week. The book has many new highlights that you can enjoy! So why not grab a warm cup of tea and have neuropoetry entertain your mind and heart on this special day?

So what's new? The full version of 'Multilingual Neuropoetry' now features a chapter on neuroscience and a chapter on poetry. While the neuroscience chapter gives you the neuroscience basics and also helps you familiarise yourself with the essential anatomy of the brain, the poetry chapter tells you how you can form different types of poems with examples to illustrate each poem type. However, reading these two chapters is not essential to understand the neuropoems in the book, but it's worth skimming through this content to have some background info if you like to have it whilst reading the book.

What's more, the book now includes 40 neuropoems, each accompanied by two pages of extensive notes that explain to you the story underlying each poem, thereby helping you understand a new aspect of neuroscience that you didn't know about before while showing you how it relates to you. By writing in the notes section about the ideas that inspired me to pen a certain neuropoem, I aim to inspire others to become creative by expressing themselves using poetry. So, why don't you have a go and find out for yourself how you can link poetry and neuroscience yourself today on this special day?

The book also has got a more detailed list of references, glossary and index to provide you with as much information as you need if you are interested in knowing more about a topic or if you would like to read for yourself the articles that inspired a neuropoem. Although it took me quite some time to revise the content, I had great fun rediscovering the content of my book and seeing it through the eyes of editors and reviewers, who helped me make my book more reader-friendly. I therefore would like to give my thanks to each and everyone of you who got involved in the process of refining the book content with your valuable comments and feedback. Check out the video below on 'Multilingual Neuropoetry' for more, which is part 1 of an interview I did earlier this year to promote the idea of neuropoetry during 'Brain Awareness Week'!

Now that my book is finished, I have got say that my neuropoetry journey was quite a ride: From penning my first few neuropoems about 4 years ago to writing my last few neuropoems about 4 months ago, each neuropoem was a revelation. I hope you enjoy reading the end-product as much as I had the joy in creating it! I wish you a Happy National Poetry Day!

Brain processes underlying the morphological decomposition of derived words

Derivational morphology

How do we process words? We know that words are built out of a root or stem, i.e. a base, and one or more affixes, i.e. infixes, prefixes or suffixes. The field that is concerned with how lexical representations such as words are created by combining different roots and affixes to give rise to polymorphemic words is known as derivational morphology. Polymorphemic means that a word consists of at least two morphemes. A morpheme is a meaningful linguistic unit that cannot be broken down any further into any more, smaller meaningful units. For example, the word ‘polymorphemic’ consists of the three linguistic units that are the prefix ‘poly’, the base ‘morpheme’ and the suffix ‘ic’. This word therefore can be divided into three meaningful linguistic units while units such as ’poly’ or ‘ic’ cannot be broken down into any more meaningful units.

In order to go from the morphological basic units to the derived words, one needs to take a certain number of steps. This number of steps often varies. For example, in the case of the derived form ‘nationality’, it is clear that this word derives from ‘national’, which in turn is derived from the noun ‘nation’. In this case therefore two steps are needed to move between ‘nation’ and ‘nationality’. This can be formally expressed in the following way: nationality <national<nation-N. In addition to two-step forms, there are also one-step forms where only one step is required to go from the basic unit to the derived form. For example, in the case of ‘development’, it is clear that it is derived from ‘develop’, which is a verb. This can be expressed in the following way: development<develop-V. Another example of one-step words is ‘soaking’, which morphologically is derived from the verb ‘soak’: soaking < soak-V. The verb root therefore is the basic form for one-step words.

Similar to ’soaking’, another example that consists of a verb root (e.g. ‘soak’) and the ‘ing’ form, is ‘eating’. In this sense, ‘eating’ and ‘soaking’ have the same surface structure ‘ing’ while having different verb roots. In both cases, only one step is needed to go from the basic form that is the verb root (e.g. ‘eat’, or ‘soak’) to the derived word (e.g. ‘eating’, or ‘soaking’), which makes them both one-step words.

Zero-derivation

When one looks at two-step words such as ‘bridging’, it is clear that at the surface both one-step and two-step forms have the same structure that is the surface structure ‘-ing’. ‘Bridging’ is a two-step word because it can be derived from the verb ‘bridge’, which in turn is derived from the noun ‘bridge’. This can be expressed in the following way: bridging<bridge-V<bridge-N. Here one can see that for two-step words the verb root (bridge-V) is zero derived from a basic noun (bridge-N).

Morphological processing where the derivational steps are not overtly marked as in this case (e.g. bridge-V and bridge-N) is called ‘zero-derivation’ (Aronoff, 1980).

 

                                               Examples of Zero Derivations

                                                                Noun                 Verb

                                                               the bridge         to bridge

                                                               the knot            to knot

                                                               the skate           to skate

                                                               the bike             to bike

                                                               the work           to work

 

Zero-derivation is a word class alternation because you have semantically related pairs of homophonous forms that differ in parts of speech. For example, there is a difference in how you would use the words ‘a bridge’ or ‘to bridge’ or ‘a knot’ and ‘to knot’ within a sentence. In both cases the words sound the same but both would be used in different contexts. Specifically, ‘bridge’ within a sentence would be used as a noun, while ‘to bridge’ within a sentence would be used as a verb. Similarly, while ‘a knot’ would be used within a sentence as a noun, ‘to knot’ would be used as a verb.

Some theories argue that ‘to knot’ is covertly derived from ‘knot’ or that ‘development’ is covertly derived from ‘develop’. Here it is obvious that in a covert derivational relationship, the derived form is morphologically more complex than the base. On the other hand, you have theories that argue that such pairs are two forms of a single lexeme that has no inherent word class. In an integrated approach, you would have grammar differentiating between distinct forms of zero-related pairs on the basis of their underlying morphological relationships.

Processing morphologically complex derivations

Morphologically complex derivations are decomposed automatically while we process them mentally (Marslen-Wilson et al., 1994). How are morphologically complex derived words processed in our brain? It has been observed that the process of decomposing morphologically complex derivations causes increased activity in our brain (Gold & Rastle, 2007). Specifically, complex derivations cause more brain activity than simple derivations (Pliatsikas et al., 2014). Accordingly, more brain activity was reported for one-step and two-step forms versus simple forms. This was observed within areas of the brain that are implicated in morphological processing such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG). Similarly, more brain activity for two-step forms was reported than for one-step forms. Specifically, there was more increased brain activity in the LIFG for two-step versus one-step nouns that was accompanied by heightened activity in occipital regions and bilateral superior temporal regions.

What tasks have been used in research to investigate morphological processing? One approach is to use a single-word presentation paradigm, in which participants are given a lexical decision task. Here derived forms of words are presented, and participants decide via a button press whether the word they see on the screen is a word or not. This task allows you to compare the performance on two-step and one-step derived forms as well as on novel derivations. One study, for example, showed an auditory lexical decision task, in which legal novel and already existent derivations were displayed in Finnish (Leminen et al., 2010). Elicited responses were measured using electrophysiology. An effect called N400 was reported in both cases, which signifies the subsequent mapping of lexical form onto meaning. This was taken as support for the effective parsing of derivations that are novel.

Another task that is used to study morphological processing is a masked priming lexical decision task, in which the first word of each pair is presented very briefly and preceded by a set of symbols and succeeded by the second word to which a word/nonword lexical decision is made. Such a design allows you to determine whether there are differences between the processing of real morphological pairs (e.g. cleaner-clean), non-morphological pairs (planet-plan) and pseudo-morphological pairs with morpheme-like chunks (proper-prop) (e.g. Rastle et al., 2004). Effects of morphological conditions such as semantically transparent morphological derivations (development-develop) or identical words (table-table) can also be compared to form priming (e.g. scandal-scan) to establish morphological effects.

Morphologically related word pairs elicit either an effect called N250 attenuation or both N250 and N400 attenuation in visual masked priming (Morris et al., 2008). Research that compared between the priming of form-related word pairs, pseudo-derived word pairs and morphologically related word pairs revealed more priming by morphologically related word pairs in the N250 and N400 latency range than by form-related and pseudo-related words (Morris et al., 2007). N400 and N250 effects both reflect the time-course of processing of complex words, specifically, the early stages of lexical processing.

Insights from research into morphological decomposition

What is known from research on morphological processing using such paradigms is that we access morphological units of derived words during the process of word recognition. The question that has been the focus up until recently is when exactly we access and process each unit. It has been considered that there are distinct units that are processed and segmented at different phases of the process of word recognition. Two processes that have been linked to the morphological decomposition of derived words over the course of word recognition are orthographic and semantic processes. 

Research in this area has been dealing among others with questions such as whether morphological units such as derivational affixes are either just a by-product of statistically recursive orthographic parts (known as the morpho-orthographic perspective), the outcome of a semantic analysis of information that affects the earliest word recognition stages (known as the morpho-semantic perspective), or if morphological units emerge at a point at which both semantic and orthographic knowledge are made use of at the same time. In the latter case, the processing of morphological units would actively follow both morpho-orthographic and morpho-semantic routes.

The majority of studies on morphological processing support the decompositional dual route perspective in terms of the observed patterns of response and activation (Leminen et al., 2019). The location and latency of the morphological effects, however, vary very much dependent on the linguistic variables that were under investigation, and on the paradigm that was used in each study. Because of the conflicting nature of the results across studies regarding the location of morphological effects, it has been therefore suggested that the processing of derivational complex words entails a network of areas in the brain. This network includes both regions that are particular to the modality in which stimuli are presented, as well as the main language-related fronto-parietal areas of the brain.

It is therefore clear that in order to create a better understanding of derivational processing, future empirical research needs to use paradigms, and stimulus characteristics that are more uniform and that even allows for comparisons to be made across studies that investigate this subject in different languages. It is only then that a completely thorough picture of how at the temporal and spatial level derived words are processed and what precise neural processes underlie morphological decomposition can emerge.

 

References

Aronoff, M. (1980). Contextuals. Language, 56(4), 744–758.

Gold, B. T., & Rastle, K. (2007). Neural correlates of morphological decomposition during visual word recognition. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 19(12), 1983–1993.

 

Leminen, A., Leminen, M. M., & Krause, C. M. (2010). Time course of the neural processing of spoken derived words: An event- related potential study. Neuroreport, 21, 948e952.

Leminen, A., Smolka, E., Dunabeitia, J., Pliatsikas, C ,(2010). Morphological processing in the brain: The good (inflection), the bad (derivation) and the ugly (compounding). Cortex, 116, 4-44.

Marslen-Wilson, W. D., Tyler, L. K., Waksler, R., & Older, L. (1994). Morphology and meaning in the English mental lexicon. Psychological Review, 101(1), 3–33.

 

Morris, J., Frank, T., Grainger, J., & Holcomb, P.,J. (2007). Semantic transparency and masked morphological priming: An ERP investigation. Psychophysiology, 44, 506e521.

 

Morris, J., Grainger, J., & Holcomb, P.,J. (2008). An electrophysiological investigation of early effects of masked morphological priming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 1021e1056.

 

Pliatsikas, C., Wheeldon, L., Lahiri, A., & Hansen, P. C. (2014). Processing of zero-derived words in English: An fMRI investigation. Neuropsychologia, 53, 47e53.

 

Rastle, K., Davis, M. H., & New, B. (2004). The broth in my brother's brothel: Morphoorthographic segmentation in visual word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 1090e1098.