HOW COMPLEX SIMPLEX WORDS CAN BE

A series of experiments investigated components of the word frequency effect in visual lexical decision, progressive demasking, and subjecti ve frequency ratings. For simplex, i.e., monomorphemic, nouns in Dutch , eve studied the effect of the frequency of the: monomorphemic noun i tself as well as the effect of the frequencies of morphologically rela ted forms on the processing of these monomorphemic nouns. The experime nts show that the frequency of the (unseen) plural forms affects the e xperimental measures. Nouns with high-frequency plurals are responded to more quickly in visual lexical decision, and they receive higher su bjective frequency ratings. However, the summed frequencies of the for mations in the morphological family of a given noun (the compounds and derived words in which that noun appears as a constituent) did not af fect the experimental measures. Surprisingly, the size of the morpholo gical family, i.e., the number of different words in the family, emerg ed as a substantial factor. A monomorphemic noun with a large family s ize elicits higher subjective frequency ratings and shorter response l atencies in visual lexical decision than a monomorphemic noun with a s mall family size. The effect of family size disappears in progressive demasking, a task; which taps into the earlier stages of form identifi cation. This suggests that the effect of family size arises at more ce ntral, post-identification stages of lexical processing. (C) 1997 Acad emic Press.