Chapter 18 Units of Representation for Derived Words in the Lexicon

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the processing and representation of derived words. Evidence and arguments concerning derived words are compared to those concerning inflected words to suggest a model, which can account for both. A brief sketch of the morphological characteristics of Italian is presented along with the issue of the format and organization of representations of derived words with reference to this language. A first set of data from the work on Italian derived words are described. These data come from lexical decision experiments in which the effects of root frequency and morphemic repetition priming on derived words were compared to effects on inflected words. The first set of data point to analogies in the processing and representation of inflected and derived words, which are phonologically transparent with respect to their base roots, are of medium-low frequency and include a commonly used affix. A second set of data, however, shows differences in the processing of inflected and derived words that can be compatible with the hypothesis of different representational modalities. The representations of derived vs inflected words are discussed with reference to the augmented addressed morphology model of lexical access. The role of both distributional and lexical properties (such as frequency of whole words and morphemes, number of word-types containing a given morpheme, boundedness of the root morpheme) in affecting lexical representation is discussed.