Inflectional complexity and experience affect plural processing in younger and older readers of Dutch and German
According to dual-route models of morphological processing, regular inflected words can be
retrieved as whole-word forms or decomposed into morphemes. Baayen, Dijkstra, and Schreuder
[(1997). Singulars and plurals in Dutch: Evidence for a parallel dual-route model. Journal of
AQ2 Memory and Language, 37, 94–117. doi:10.1006/jmla.1997.2509] proposed a
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dual-route model
according to which plurals of singular-dominant words (e.g. “brides”) are decomposed, while
plurals of plural-dominant words (e.g. “peas”) are accessed as whole-word units. We report two
lexical-decision experiments investigating how plural processing is influenced by participants’
age (a proxy for experience with word forms) and morphological complexity of the language
(German versus Dutch). For both Dutch participant groups and older German participants, we
replicated the interaction between number and dominance reported by Baayen and colleagues.
Younger German participants showed a main effect of number, indicating access of all plurals via
decomposition. Access to stored forms seems to depend on morphological richness and
experience with word forms. The data pattern fits neither full-decomposition nor full-storage
models, but is compatible with dual-route models
Additional information
plcp_a_1247213_sm6144.pdf
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