Memory for affixes in a long-lag priming paradigm

Psycholinguistic research on the processing of morphologically complex words has largely focused debates about how/if lexical stems are recognized, stored, and retrieved. Comparatively little investigated similar issues for functional affixes. In Word or Lexeme Based Morphology (Aronoff 1994), affixes not representational units par with roots. This view is in stark contrast to claims linguistic theories like Distributed (Halle & Marantz 1993), which assign rich content We conducted a series eight visual decision studies, evaluating effects derivational affix priming along stem priming, identity form semantic at long short lags. find robust consistent (but priming) lags up 33 items, supporting position that morphemes, i.e., stems. Intriguingly, we only weaker evidence long-lag effect found other studies. interpret this potential asymmetry terms salience different morphological contexts recollection memory.