Decomposition of prefixed words in Russian

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Morphology
• Lexical Access

Background:

• Understanding how the mind processes word structure is crucial for psycholinguistics.
• Investigating morphological decomposition reveals insights into lexical representation and retrieval.
• Russian prefixed nouns offer a unique case study due to their rich morphology.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the nature of morphological decomposition in Russian prefixed nouns.
• To determine whether decomposition is driven by morpho-orthographic or morphosemantic factors.
• To examine if decomposition occurs even for morphologically complex or frequent derived forms.

Main Methods:

• Conducted masked-priming experiments using Russian prefixed nouns.
• Tested prime-target pairs with true morphological relations, apparent relations, and purely orthographic relations.
• Analyzed facilitation effects to infer the underlying decomposition processes.

Main Results:

• Facilitation was observed for both truly and apparently morphologically related pairs.
• No facilitation was found for purely orthographic relations.
• Early segmentation into constituent morphemes occurs regardless of semantic relatedness or word frequency.

Conclusions:

• Morphological decomposition of Russian prefixed nouns is primarily driven by morpho-orthographic cues.
• Lexical access involves an early segmentation process that parses words into potential morphemes.
• This segmentation occurs even when the derived form is more frequent than its stem.