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Article published In: The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 16:1 (2021) ► pp.69–97

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Priming Maltese plurals

Representation of sound and broken plurals in the mental lexicon

 | Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
 | Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
 | University of Malta
Published online: 8 October 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.20008.nie
Abstract
We investigate the storage and processing of sound and broken plural forms in the Maltese lexicon by means of a cross-modal priming study. The results show no significant differences in reaction time between sound and broken plurals, but indicate a different priming effect for sound than for broken plurals. We argue that the different priming effect is a result of the phonological overlap between sound singulars and their corresponding plurals forms, while broken singulars and their plurals do not share the same phonological structure. Our results support a single-mechanism model of morphological processing in which both frequency of pattern and morphophonological similarity interact.
Article outline
  • Studying storage in the mental lexicon
  • Hypotheses
  • Maltese plurals
  • Methodology
    • Participants
    • Materials
  • Procedure
  • Results
  • Statistical analysis
    • Coding of variables
    • Results: First LMER Model – Testing the Dual-Mechanism account
    • Results: Second LMER Model – testing the single mechanism account
    • Discussion
  • General discussion & conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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