Solely soles: Inter-lemma competition in inflected word recognition

It was found that the unmasked presentation of a complex form that corresponded to only one definition of a homograph (e.g., solely, which is related to the ‘alone’ meaning of soles) did not inhibit the subsequent recognition of a complex form that was related to the competing meaning (e.g., SOLES, which is related to the ‘shoe’ meaning). Further studies found that inhibitory priming only emerged when the unmasked prime was related to the subordinate meaning of the homograph (e.g., fined) and the target to the dominant meaning (e.g., FINEST), but not when the prime was dominant (e.g., longer) and the target subordinate (e.g., LONGING). These findings suggest that the relative dominance of the prime-target pair dictates whether inhibitory priming occurs. Implications for frameworks of morphological processing are discussed. 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Journal of Memory and Language 76 (2014) 127–140