ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the representation and storage of morphological units of complex words in Spanish. According to the standard picture in psycholinguistic theorizing, the proper account of human linguistic performance involves the execution of real-time computations over representations or data structures that are permanently stored in memory. In opposition to Dual models are those that claim that there is a single mechanism that accounts for complex words, both regular and irregular: they either consider that a lexicon that stores elements is not necessary for morphemes, because it is sufficient with the systematic application of a powerful set of rules, or they relinquish rules and propose different solutions to account for the morphology of languages by postulating an enriched lexicon. The psychological reality of an independent level of morphological representation has some supporting evidence from studies of word recognition in Spanish.
