ERIC Number: EJ878372
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009-Mar
Pages: 44
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0097-8507
EISSN: N/A
Suffix Ordering and Morphological Processing
Plag, Ingo; Baayen, Harald
Language, v85 n1 p109-152 Mar 2009
There is a long-standing debate about the principles constraining the combinatorial properties of suffixes. Hay 2002 and Hay & Plag 2004 proposed a model in which suffixes can be ordered along a hierarchy of processing complexity. We show that this model generalizes to a larger set of suffixes, and we provide independent evidence supporting the claim that a higher rank in the ordering correlates with increased productivity. Behavioral data from lexical decision and word naming show, however, that this model has been one-sided in its exclusive focus on the importance of constituent-driven processing, and that it requires supplementation by a second and equally important focus on the role of memory. Finally, using concepts from graph theory, we show that the space of existing suffix combinations can be conceptualized as a directed graph, which, with surprisingly few exceptions, is acyclic. This acyclicity is hypothesized to be functional for lexical processing.
Descriptors: Suffixes, Language Processing, Morphology (Languages), Generalization, Models, Difficulty Level, Correlation, Role, Memory, Linguistic Theory, Graphs, Theories
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A