Palatalization in the Russian verb system: a psycholinguistic study

Abstract

In this paper, we present experimental data on the processing of loanwords and nonce words that focuses on morphonological alternations in Russian. This study addresses the issue of how stem allomorphy involving palatalization of the velar/palatal and dental/palatal types in the Russian verb system is processed in adults. Processing of morphonological alternations is shown to be quite variable (and probably unproductive) and to depend, on the one hand, on the distribution of allomorphs within the verb paradigm, and on the other hand, on verb class productivity. We hypothesize that these differences should be reflected in child language acquisition.