Morphological derivation as a tool for creating new words that speak to French speakers

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the role of morphological structure, semantic interpretability and conceptual synonymy in the processing of pseudowords in a lexical decision experiments in French. We used four types of stimuli: 1- non-morphological pseudowords (an English example would be °sportume); 2- semantically noninterpretable pseudowords (°rapidation); 3- semantically interpretable pseudowords (°rapidify); 4- synonym pseudowords (°gardenist). The results show significant effects, on lexical decision, of morphological structure and semantic interpretability, but not of conceptual synonymy, illustrating the time-course of a pseudoword’s journey from representations of orthographic form to computation of meaning.