The morphological complexity of simplex nouns

This paper reports experimental results concerning the processing of morphologically simplex nouns. It appears that the way in which these nouns are processed is influenced not only by their own frequency of use, but also by two other frequency measures. First, the token frequency of the corresponding plural inflection plays a role. Second, the type count of the number of compounds and derived words in which a given simplex noun appears as a constituent also affects our experimental measures. We offer an explanation of these results in terms of the semantic differences between noun pluralization as inherent inflection on the one hand, and derivation and compounding on the other.