Keywords

lexicon, morphology, word

Abstract

Discussion about the structure of the lexicon has primarily focused on morphologically complex words. Theories about the lexicon assume that certain items are stored, such as morphologically simple words, e.g. hero and govern, and derivational suffixes, e.g. -ism and - ment. Given these assumptions, the majority of arguments discuss the status of morphologically complex words, e.g. heroism and government. Theories posit different levels of parsing and storage. The extent to which theories accept parsing as a active process during lexical access ranges from classical approaches which assume all morphologically complex words are parsed, to theories which suggest all words, simple and complex, are stored whole.