Revisiting the Suffixing Preference: Native-Language Affixation Patterns Influence Perception of Sequences.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Universal grammar theories propose cognitive or perceptual biases shape language structure.
• A proposed bias suggests sequences differing at their ends are perceived as more similar, potentially explaining the prevalence of suffixing over prefixing in world languages.
• Previous evidence for this bias relies heavily on English speakers, a suffixing language.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the universality of the proposed perceptual bias by examining speakers of a prefixing language.
• To investigate whether perceptual similarity judgments can explain cross-linguistic preferences for suffixing.

Main Methods:

• Conducted perceptual-similarity judgment tasks with speakers of Kîîtharaka, a Bantu language with extensive prefixing.
• Compared Kîîtharaka speakers' judgments with those of English speakers (previously studied).

Main Results:

• Kîîtharaka speakers (N=72) exhibited perceptual similarity judgments opposite to those of English speakers (N=51).
• This finding challenges the hypothesis that a universal perceptual bias explains the suffixing preference in global languages.

Conclusions:

• The prevalence of suffixing in world languages may not be attributable to a universal, domain-general perceptual bias.
• Cross-linguistic variation in morphological structure might be influenced by factors beyond simple perceptual judgments, such as language-specific learning or historical development.