Formal linguistics and mental representation: Psycholinguistic contributions to the identification and explanation of morphological and syntactic competence

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses potential contributions of psycholinguistic techniques and findings to the identification and explanation of linguistic competence, as modelled within the generative paradigm of formal syntax and formal morphology. It is argued that the nature of mental representation, although undoubtedly important in the study of the phylogenesis of syntactic aspects of Universal Grammar (UG), has little to contribute directly to the specification of synchronic syntactic competence. Morphological competence, however, is fundamentally different, at least in languages like English, especially in terms of creativity, compositionality and productivity. These differences, together with the limited psycholinguistic data that are available, indicate that investigation of the mental representation of morphologically complex words can provide crucial evidence for formal linguists' characterisations of morphological knowledge. It is concluded that psycholinguists, syntacticians and morphologists can ...