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Related Experiment Videos

Modality effects in compounding with English inflectional morphology.

Jennifer A Hayes1, Pamela M Smith, Victoria A Murphy

  • 1Psychology Department, University College London, UK. jennifer.hayes@ucl.ac.uk

British Journal of Psychology (London, England : 1953)
|September 1, 2005
PubMed
Summary

Native English speakers often use singular nouns in compounds, even when referring to plurals. Irregular plurals appear more frequently than regular plurals in these constructions, challenging innate morphological constraints.

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Area of Science:

  • Linguistics
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Language Acquisition

Background:

  • The formation of English noun-noun compounds involving plural morphemes is a key area for understanding language acquisition and representation theories.
  • Native speakers predominantly use singular forms in compounds, even when the referent is plural, with irregular plurals appearing more often than regular ones.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the treatment of plural morphemes in English noun-noun compounds.
  • To test competing theories of language acquisition and representation by examining pluralization patterns in compounds.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of plural morpheme usage in English noun-noun compounds across different age groups (children, teenagers, adults).
  • Comparison of the frequency of singular, irregular plural, and regular plural forms as the first noun in compounds.

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Main Results:

  • Native English speakers rarely use regular plurals as the first noun in compounds (e.g., 'rats chaser').
  • Irregular plurals are sometimes used (e.g., 'mice chaser'), while singular forms are frequently employed even for plural referents.
  • This pattern suggests a dissociation between the treatment of regular and irregular plurals.

Conclusions:

  • The observed patterns challenge innate, constraint-based explanations of morphology, which predict uniform treatment of regular and irregular forms.
  • External factors like input and response modality may influence pluralization in compounds, warranting further investigation into their role.
  • The findings encourage a re-evaluation of purely internal morphological constraints in favor of a more nuanced understanding that includes external influences.