Pitfalls in tracking the psychological reality of lexically based and rule-based inflection

Clahsen reports the results from two sets of word-recognition experiments w ith adult native speakers of German supporting the notion that the processi ng of regular (or default) inflection differs from the processing of irregu lar inflection. My commentary points to shortcomings in stimulus selection and inconsistencies in the pattern of results, revealing that the empirical support for the proposed dual mechanism is much weaker than Clahsen sugges ts.