Default nominal inflection in Hebrew: evidence for mental variables

According to the 'word/rule' account, regular inflection is computed by a d efault, symbolic process, whereas irregular inflection is achieved by assoc iative memory. Conversely, pattern-associator accounts attribute both regul ar and irregular inflection to an associative process. The acquisition of t he default is ascribed to the asymmetry in the distribution of regular and irregular tokens. Irregular tokens tend to form tight, well-defined phonolo gical clusters (e.g. sing-sang, ring-rang), whereas regular forms are diffu sely distributed throughout the phonological space. This distributional asy mmetry is necessary and:sufficient for the acquisition of a regular default . Hebrew nominal inflection challenges this account. We demonstrate that He brew speakers use the regular masculine inflection as a default despite the overlap in the distribution of regular and irregular Hebrew masculine noun s. Specifically, Experiment 1 demonstrates that regular inflection is produ ctively applied to novel nouns regardless of their similarity co existing r egular nouns. In contrast, the inflection of irregular sounding nouns is st rongly sensitive to their similarity to stored irregular tokens. Experiment 2 establishes the generality of the regular default for novel words that a re phonologically idiosyncratic. Experiment 3 demonstrates that Hebrew spea kers assign the default regular inflection to borrowings and names that are identical to existing irregular nouns. The existence of default inflection in Hebrew is incompatible with the distributional asymmetry hypothesis. Ou r findings also lend no support for a type-frequency account. The convergen ce of the circumstances triggering default inflection in Hebrew, German and English suggests that the capacity for default inflection:ion may be gener al. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.