Chapter published in:
All Things Morphology: Its independence and its interfaces
Edited by Sedigheh Moradi, Marcia Haag, Janie Rees-Miller and Andrija Petrovic
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 353] 2021
► pp. 147–168

Chapter 9
The suffixing preference

A preliminary report on processing affixes in Georgian

| University of Massachusetts Amherst
| Stony Brook University | Ikerbasque, Basque Center on Cognition, Brain, and Language
The suffixing preference refers to the observation that cross-linguistically suffixes are more abundant than prefixes (Greenberg 1963). Hawkins & Cutler (1988) explain this preference in part by noting that spoken word recognition relies heavily on the beginnings of words, making it advantageous to have no prefix. To test the Hawkins-Cutler hypothesis in Georgian, we carried out lexical decision experiments, a standard kind of experiment in which the participant is presented with real words and nonce words and must identify which is which. In general, responses to Georgian words with prefixes were more accurate and/or faster than to comparable words with suffixes. These results suggest that prefixes may be easier to process than suffixes, contrary to the universalist claim stated above.
Keywords: suffixing preference, word recognition, processing, lexical decision, Georgian
Article outline
  • 1.The Hawkins-Cutler hypothesis and subsequent work
  • 2.Overview of the morphology studied
  • 3.Experiment 1
    • 3.1Materials
    • 3.2Subjects and methods
    • 3.3Results and discussion
  • 4.Experiment 2
    • 4.1Materials
      • Complex stems with v- or -s
      • Derivational prefix i- or suffix -d
    • 4.2Subjects and methods
    • 4.3Results and discussion
      • Complex stems with v- or -s
      • Derivational prefix i- or suffix -d
  • 5.Concluding discussion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 August 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.353.09har
References
Amenta, Simona & Davide Crepaldi
2012 Morphological processing as we know it: An analytical review of morphological effects in visual word identification. Frontiers in Psychology 3. 232–243. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bertram, Raymond, Matti Laine & Katja Karvinen
1999 The interplay of word formation type, affixal homonymy, and productivity in lexical processing: Evidence from a morphologically rich language. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 28. 213–226. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bridgers, Franca Ferrari & Natalie Kacinik
2017 How linearity and structural complexity interact and affect the recognition of Italian derived words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 46. 175–200. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, Anne
1985 Cross-language psycholinguistics. In Ulrich Hans Frauenfelder & Anne Cutler (eds.), special issue of Linguistics 23. 659–667. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 Psycholinguistics in our time. In Patrick Rabbitt (ed.), Inside psychology: A science over 50 years, 91–101. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cutler, Anne, John A. Hawkins & Gary Gilligan
1985 The suffixing preference: A processing explanation. Linguistics 23. 723–758. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dryer, Matthew S.
2013 Prefixing vs. suffixing in inflectional morphology. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), World Atlas of Language Structure, Ch. 26. https://​wals​.info​/chapter​/26. (Accessed 21 July 2019).
Feldman, Laurie Beth, Ram Frost & Tamar Pnini
1995 Decomposing words into their constituent morphemes: Evidence from English and Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21. 947–960.Google Scholar
Feldman, Laurie Beth & Jacqueline Larabee
2001 Morphological facilitation following prefixed but not suffixed primes: Lexical architecture or modality-specific processes? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 27. 680–691.Google Scholar
Friederici, Angela D., Anja Hahne & Axel Mecklinger
1996 Temporal structure of syntactic parsing: Early and late event-related brain potential effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 22. 1219–1248.Google Scholar
Friederici, Angela D. & Jürgen Weissenborn
2007 Mapping sentence form onto meaning: The syntax-semantic interface. Brain Research 1146. 50–58. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1971 Historical syntax and synchronic morphology: An archaeologist’s field trip. Chicago Linguistic Society 7. 394–415.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H.
1963 Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Joseph H. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of language, 73–113. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Christopher
1988 Integrating diachronic and processing principles in explaining the suffixing preference. In John A. Hawkins (ed.), Explaining language universals, 321–349. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hana, Jirka & Peter W. Culicover
2008 Morphological complexity outside of universal grammar. Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, https://​www​.asc​.ohio​-state​.edu​/culicover​.1​/Publications​/Hana%20​&%20Culicover%20​-%20morphological%20complexity​.pdf. (Accessed 20 July 2019).
Hawkins, John A. & Anne Cutler
1988 Psycholinguistic factors in morphological asymmetry. In John A. Hawkins (ed.), Explaining language universals, 280–317. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hawkins, John A. & Gary Gilligan
1988 Prefixing and suffixing universals in relation to basic word order. Lingua 74. 219–259. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P.
2014 Asymmetries in the prosodic phrasing of function words: Another look at the suffixing preference. Language 90. 927–960. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kgolo, Naledi & Sonja Eisenbeiss
2015 The role of morphological structure in the processing of complex forms: Evidence from Setswana deverbative nouns. In Alice C. Harris, T. Florian Jaeger & Elisabeth Norcliffe (eds.), Laboratory in the field: Advances in cross-linguistic psycholinguistics, special issue of Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 30. 1116–1133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mač’avariani, Givi
1959 ‘Unišno vnebiti’ kartvelur enebši. [The ‘markerless passive’ in the Kartvelian languages]. Kartvelur enata st’rukt’uris sak’itxebi 1. 101–129.Google Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, William D.
1980 Speech understanding as a psychological process. In Jean Claude Simon (ed.), Spoken language generation and understanding, 39–67. Dordrecht: Reidel. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Marslen-Wilson, William D. & Alan Welsh
1978 Processing interactions and lexical access during word recognition in continuous speech. Cognitive Psychology 10. 29–63. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Šanize, Ak’ak’i
1973 [1953] Kartuli enis gramat’ik’is sapuzvlebi. [Fundamentals of the grammar of the Georgian language.] Tbilisi: Universit’et’i.Google Scholar
Schreuder, R. & R. Harald Baayen
1997 How complex simplex words can be. Journal of Memory and Language 37. 118–139. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
St. Clair, Michelle C., Padraic Monaghan & Michael Ramscar
2009 Relationships between language structure and language learning: The suffixing preference in grammatical categorization. Cognitive Science 33. 1317–1329. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van den Brink, Daniëlle & Peter Hagoort
2004 The influence of semantic and syntactic context constraints on lexical selection and integration in spoken-word comprehension as revealed by ERPs. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16. 1068–1084. CrossrefGoogle Scholar