Abstract(s)
Morphological aspects of human language processing have been suggested by some to be
reducible to the combination of orthographic and semantic effects, while others propose that
morphological structure is represented separately from semantics and orthography and
involves distinct neuro-cognitive processing mechanisms. Here we used event-related brain
potentials (ERPs) to investigate semantic, morphological and formal (orthographic)
processing conjointly in a masked priming paradigm. We directly compared morphological to
both semantic and formal/orthographic priming (shared letters) on verbs. Masked priming
was used to reduce strategic effects related to prime perception and to suppress semantic
priming effects. The three types of priming led to distinct ERP and behavioural patterns:
semantic priming was not found, while formal and morphological priming resulted in
diverging ERP patterns. These results are consistent with models of lexical processing that
make reference to morphological structure. We discuss how they fit in with the existing
literature and how unresolved issues could be addressed in further studies.