Early morphological processing is sensitive to morphemic meanings: Evidence from processing ambiguous morphemes

In three priming experiments, we investigated whether the meanings of ambiguous morphemes were activated during word recognition. Using a meaning generation task, Experiment 1 demonstrated that the dominant meaning of individually presented ambiguous morphemes was reported more often than did other less frequent meanings. Also, participants tended to produce responses that were consistent with the morphemic meaning of the subliminally presented prime words. Experiment 2 employed a masked priming lexical decision task (prime display duration = 40 ms) and showed that the recognition of targets which took the dominant meaning of ambiguous morphemes was facilitated by all morpheme-sharing primes, regardless of their intended interpretation. In contrast, morphological priming for subordinate targets was observed only in the subordinate priming condition. Using an unmasked priming task (prime display duration = 100 ms). Experiment 3 revealed that lexical decision responses were facilitated only when the morphemic interpretations in primes and targets were matched. These data indicate that the different meanings of an ambiguous morpheme are activated early during word recognition and that it takes time to select the appropriate morphemic interpretation. The results are discussed with reference to a modified lemma model of word recognition.

► We examined the role of morpho-semantics in word recognition using ambiguous morphemes. ► Priming of dominant targets was independent of morphemic meaning in primes. ► Priming of subordinate targets was observed only when primes take the subordinate meaning. ► Morphemic meaning was activated at the early stage of word recognition. ► We modified the lemma model of word recognition to accommodate the present results.