Word frequency and root-morpheme frequency effects on processing of Korean particle-suffixed words created by Sungryong Koh, Nakyeong Yoon, Si On Yoon & Alexander Pollatsek

Two experiments investigated the roles of the frequency of the root morpheme and the frequency of the whole word for a particular type of suffixed word in Korean in which the suffixed word can be thought of as a phrase (e.g., grandson-with). In both experiments, sentence frames were constructed so that they could have one of two target words that varied on frequency characteristics in the same location in the sentence. In Experiment 1, the frequency of the root morpheme was varied with the frequency of the word controlled, and in Experiment 2, the frequency of the word was varied with the frequency of the root morpheme controlled. Word frequency had a significant effect on fixation times, whereas root morpheme frequency did not. The results were surprising as native Korean speakers view the root morpheme as the “word” (analogous to how English readers would view a noun followed by a prepositional phrase).