Acceptability ratings of regular and irregular past-tense forms: Evidence for a dual-system model of language from word frequency and phonological neighbourhood effects
Mt. Ullman, Acceptability ratings of regular and irregular past-tense forms: Evidence for a dual-system model of language from word frequency and phonological neighbourhood effects, LANG COGN P, 14(1), 1999, pp. 47-67
What are the computational and representational bases of the mental lexicon
of words, and of the rules of grammar which productively combine lexical f
orms into larger words, phrases and sentences? "Dual-system" theories posit
that lexical forms with non-compositional (arbitrary) sound-meaning pairin
gs are stored in memory, whereas compositional structures are subserved by
a distinct rule-processing system. "Single-system" theories claim that lexi
con and grammar are both subserved by a single associative memory. Investig
ations of English past tense may help to resolve this controversy. On the d
ual-system view, irregular past-tense forms (e.g. blow-blew) are retrieved
from memory, whereas regular past-tense forms (e.g. walk-walked) are produc
ed by the application of an -ed-suffixation rule. On the single-system view
, both types of past-tense forms are learned and computed in associative me
mory. To test these competing theories, acceptability ratings were elicited
from native English-speaking adults for regular and irregular past-tense f
orms, and their stems, in sentence contexts. Partialling out stem ratings,
ratings of irregular past-tense forms (blew) correlated with their frequenc
ies and with measures of the number of similar-sounding irregular verbs (th
rew, grew), whereas ratings of regular part-tense forms (walked) did not co
rrelate with their frequencies or with measures of the number of similar-so
unding regular verbs (stalked, balked). The results suggest that irregular
past tenses are retrieved from associative memory, whereas regular past ten
ses are produced by a suffixation rule.