Morpheme decomposition and the mental lexicon : evidence from the visual recognition of compounds

This study presents an experimental investigation of morpheme decomposition in the visual recognition of English compounds. It discusses linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives of the mental lexicon and the role of compound recognition data in the formulation of hypotheses about lexical access and representations.In a series of three experiments it was found that existing compounds such as "warehouse" appear to be represented in the mental lexicon as morphologically-complex full forms. On the other hand, novel compounds such as "winehouse" appear to be decomposed into their constituent morphemes in the process of word recognition. It was also found that the constraints of English orthography play a significant role in the interpretation of novel compounds. The locus of the orthographic effect, however, appears to be post-lexical.The results of this study of compound recognition are consistent with a view of the lexicon as a self-reorganizing store of knowledge, which is characterized by cost-free storage and access