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Abstract

Abstract

According to the affix-chunking hypothesis, a letter search should be more difficult for a letter embedded in an affix compared with a non-affixed letter sequence because affixes have a functional significance. On the other hand, the decomposition hypothesis claims that derived (e.g., ) and pseudo-derived words (e.g., ) are processed similarly, with lexical access being driven by affix stripping followed by the activation of the remaining stem to reach the mental lexicon. We conducted a letter-search task to test these hypotheses using both prefixed (e.g., ‘detour’), suffixed (e.g., ‘actor’) words, compared with matched pseudo-prefixed (e.g., ‘decor’), pseudo-suffixed (e.g., ‘flower’) words. Decision latencies on letter targets were compared to non-affixed words for each type of affix (e.g., ‘drug’ for and ‘task’ for ). Our results revealed an asymmetry in the processing of suffixed versus prefixed words. While a significant facilitation effect was found for suffixed words relative to pseudo-suffixed words, no similar advantage was observed for prefixed over pseudo-prefixed words. The asymmetry in identifying letters in prefixes and suffixes is interpreted in terms of the differing functional salience of affixes in French.

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2025-07-03
2026-03-13

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/content/journals/10.1075/ml.24033.gir
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Morphological salience effects of prefixes and suffixes embedded in French words
John Benjamins ; https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.24033.gir
/content/journals/10.1075/ml.24033.gir
/content/journals/10.1075/ml.24033.gir
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keywords: letter-search task ; morphological salience ; affix processing ; word recogniton ; French

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