Psychological validity of phonological generalizations: A priming experiment in Spanish

Keywords

psycholingusitics, Spanish speakers, morphemically related word-pairs

Abstract

This paper describes a psycholinguistic experiment designed to determine if the phonological generalizations which are described by linguists are psychologically significant for Spanish speakers. The experiment consists of a lexical decision task, in which the priming effect which morphemically related words have on each other is measured. In the experiment, morphemically related word‐pairs with allomorphy representative of common phonological patterns did not prime better than pairs with uncommon root allomorphy. These findings suggest that the kind of phonological alternation which exists in a word‐pair has no bearing on whether the words are considered morphemically related or not by language speakers.

Original Publication Citation

1994. “The Psychological Validity of Phonological Generalizations: A Priming Experiment in Spanish.” Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 1.132-143.

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

1994

Publisher

Swets & Zeitlinger

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

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