Dissertation - Michael Becker

(115) agív amóvapísaxígamíxalícaxífanízaSíkafíSazídadósaSógatóxaSócarófahózabókagóSapód3.5.1 MaterialsIn the experiment, each participant was trained and tested on a language that contained10 nouns, where each noun consisted of a random pairing of a sound and a concrete object,like a fruit or a household item. Once trained and tested, each participant was asked togenerate plurals for 20 new nouns that they haven’t encountered before. An additional nounwas used in the beginning of the experiment for demonstration. In total, each participantencountered 31 nouns.All the pictures of the objects used in the experiment were taken indoors, using daylight,with a Sony digital camera at 3.2 mega-pixels, then reduced to 400x300 pixels and savedas jpg files. The objects were placed on a neutral background, and positioned so as to makethem as easy as possible to recognize. The objects were chosen such that their names inactual Hebrew were masculine im-takers. Items that were shown both in singletons andin pairs included the demonstration item, which was an almond, and the training items,which were a red onion, a potato, an apple, a persimmon, a strawberry, an artichoke, anorange, a green bell pepper, an eggplant, and a cucumber. In the plural generation phase,subjects saw the following items in pairs: pears, lemons, pomegranates, avocados, heads of115