Cognitive morphology in finnish: Foundations of a new model

Abstract

We summarise the main results from a series of Finnish studies dealing with single-word experiments with aphasics as well as lexical decision and eye-movement registration tests performed on normals. On the basis of our experimental results, we propose a processing model of Finnish nouns. For the input and central lexicons, this Stem Allomorph/Inflectional Decomposition (SAID) model assumes morphological decomposition of inflected (with the exception of the most frequently encountered inflected noun forms) but not derived noun forms. For the output lexicon, it predicts that both inflected and productive derived forms have decomposed representations. In the case of marked stem variation (resulting from stem formation and/or morphophonological alternation), the model assumes that the stems are represented by their allomorphs, and not by a single morph. In this respect, our model postulates more suppletion in the input/output lexicons than would be predicted on the basis of formal morphological analyses. However, among the allomorphs, the nominative singular of nouns appears to have a special status.