Syllables and morphemes: Contrasting frequency effects in Spanish

Three types of sublexical units were studied in Spanish visual word recogni tion: the syllable, the basic orthographic syllabic structure (BOSS), and t he root morpheme. In Experiment 1, using a lexical-decision task, a typical inhibitory effect of the first-syllable frequency was found (while keeping constant the BOSS frequency) as well as the word-frequency effect. Experim ent 2 examined the role of both the BOSS frequency and the word frequency, also in a lexical-decision task. Syllable frequency was controlled. Both th e BOSS frequency and the word frequency showed facilitatory effects. Howeve r, in Experiments 3A and 3B, a facilitatory effect of the root frequency (w hen controlling for BOSS frequency) and a null effect of BOSS frequency (wh en controlling for root frequency) were found, suggesting that the BOSS eff ect is in fact reflecting a morpheme effect. A review of the current models shows that it is difficult to integrate syllables and morphemes in a uniqu e model.