The Contribution of Semantic Transparency to the Morphological Decomposition of Prefixed Words

Linguists typically assume that words are lexically decomposed into constituent parts even when the root morphemes cannot be ascribed any meaning (e.g. sub-mit, de-cide, pre-cise) (cf. Hockett 1954, Aronoff 1976). To date the psychological evidence supporting the decomposition of these words is conflicting and controversial. In fact, some word recognition research supports the opposite view, that semantically opaque complex words do not pattern behaviorally with semantically transparent complex words (e.g., insincere & unfasten) (Marslen-Wilson et. al 1994). This paper presents data from three segment shifting studies (Feldman & Fowler 1987) which suggest that speakers do decompose words that are derived from a semantically opaque bound root provided the prefix is semantically transparent. Additionally, no evidence was found that a morphophonemic alternation (e.g. submit ~ submission; remit ~ remission) aids in the classification of these words as morphologically complex, as predicted by Aronoff (1976). The segment shifting task is designed to interrogate speakers ’ lexical representations by having them create words from the parts of other words. This tas