Structure, form, and meaning in the mental lexicon: evidence from Arabic

摘要: Does the organization of mental lexicon reflect combination abstract underlying morphemic units or concatenation word-level phonological units? We address these fundamental issues in Arabic, a Semitic language where every surface form is potentially analyzable into - word pattern and root this view contrasts with stem-based approaches, chiefly driven by linguistic considerations, which neither roots nor patterns play independent roles formation lexical representation. Five cross-modal priming experiments examine processing morphologically complex forms three major subdivisions Arabic deverbal nouns, verbs, primitive nouns. The results demonstrate that morphemes function as cognitive entities, operating independently semantic factors dissociable from possible confounds, while approaches consistently fail to accommodate basic psycholinguistic properties lexicon.