READING DERIVATIONALLY AFFIXED FRENCH WORDS

The recognition of multimorphemic French words was investigated using a procedure that allowed the position of first fixation of the eye to be manipulated and gaze durations to be recorded. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that prefixed and suffixed words were recognised most rapidly when the eye started at points at which the words' stem could be seen distinctly. In Experiment 2, gaze durations for prefixed words equated for surface frequency were longer for words with low-frequency rather than high-frequency stems. The findings support the idea that complex words are accessed in terms of their stem, and that the order in which affixes are listed in an entry is determined by the surface frequency of the entire word formed by the stem plus affix. Alternative accounts of the findings were considered.