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Suffix ordering and morphological processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Ingo Plag  and
Harald Baayen
Ingo Plag*
Affiliation:
Universität of Siegen
Harald Baayen*
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
*
Plag, Universität Siegen, English Linguistics, Fachbereich 3, Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2, D-57068 Siegen, Germany [plag@anglistik.uni-siegen.de]
Baayen, University of Alberta, Department of Linguistics, 4-26 Assiniboia Hall, Edmonton, T6G 2E5, Canada [baayen@ualberta.ca]
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Abstract

There is a long-standing debate about the principles constraining the combinatorial properties of suffixes. Hay 2002 and Hay & Plag 2004 proposed a model in which suffixes can be ordered along a hierarchy of processing complexity. We show that this model generalizes to a larger set of suffixes, and we provide independent evidence supporting the claim that a higher rank in the ordering correlates with increased productivity. Behavioral data from lexical decision and word naming show, however, that this model has been one-sided in its exclusive focus on the importance of constituent-driven processing, and that it requires supplementation by a second and equally important focus on the role of memory. Finally, using concepts from graph theory, we show that the space of existing suffix combinations can be conceptualized as a directed graph, which, with surprisingly few exceptions, is acyclic. This acyclicity is hypothesized to be functional for lexical processing.

Keywords

suffix orderingmorphological processingproductivitylexical stratagraph theorydirected acyclic graph

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 85 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 109 - 152
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by Linguistic Society of America

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