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4 - Phonotactic and Morphological Effects in the Acceptability of Pseudowords
from Part I - In What Ways Is Language Processing Tuned to the Morphological Structure of a Language?
- By Jeremy M. Needle, Janet B. Pierrehumbert, Jennifer B. Hay
Edited by Andrea D. Sims, Ohio State University, Adam Ussishkin, University of Arizona, Jeff Parker, Brigham Young University, Utah, Samantha Wray, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
Book:

Morphological Diversity and Linguistic Cognition

Published online:

19 May 2022

Print publication:

02 June 2022, pp 79-112
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Summary

We develop a large set of pseudowords that systematically varies length and phonotactic probability and obtain acceptability ratings using an online interface. We find that phonotactic likelihood and the presence of an apparent morphological parse both significantly predict acceptability; pseudowords containing known morphemes are more acceptable than otherwise comparable pseudowords that do not. We find support for the conjecture that novel words with apparent morphology are advantaged as additions to the lexicon. The resulting lexicon, as observed, is one in which long words are not a random sampling of phonotactically acceptable wordforms, but instead tend to be completely or partially decomposable into morphemes.