Transposed-letter effects in processing morphologically complex Greek words

Abstract

We examined whether and when the morphemic structure of Greek suffixed words is accessed during visual word recognition using a masked priming lexical decision experiment combined with the transposed-letter (TL) paradigm. We hypothesized that, if morphological structure is accessed after letter-position coding, then the orthographic disruption caused by letter transposition would affect priming more severely when transposed letters straddle morphemic boundaries than when they belong to the same morpheme. Results showed that Greek readers were able to recognize morphologically complex Greek target words when morphemes were disrupted by letter transpositions regardless of the position of transpositions (morpheme-internal, at morpheme edge, or across morphemic boundaries). Priming from the TL primes was significantly less than priming from intact morphological primes observed previously. The equal magnitude of processing costs incurred by transpositions in all positions indicates that any alteration of the internal structure of morphologically complex words is similarly detrimental, consistent with the important role of morphemes in a morphologically rich language. Results suggest that morphologically complex Greek words undergo a morphological decomposition process that interacts with orthographic TL effects, indicating that access to the internal structure of these words takes place early in visual word recognition, before letter position coding.