ABSTRACT
The psychological reality of the morphological complexity difference between compounds (teacup) and single words (crescent) is highly controversial, and the conditions and time course of morphological decomposition remain contested in the psycholinguistic literature (McQueen & Cutler, 1998). Decomposition is argued to occur early or late (Andrews, 1986), in novel but not lexicalized compounds (Van Jaarsveld & Rattink, 1988), and in long but not short compounds (Bertram & Hyönä, 2003). This study investigates decomposition in compounds using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in a visual lexical decision paradigm comparing compounds (CW) and single words (SW). The results suggest early decomposition, regardless of lexicalization or constituent length.
