Individual differences in morphological processing: The role of morphemic knowledge in Sino-Korean suffixed word recognition *1

Abstract

Kang, Jinwon, Seong-Hak Jo, Joo-Hee Ahn, Jung-Hye Choi, and Sun-Young Lee. 2025. Individual differences in morphological processing: The role of morphemic knowledge in Sino-Korean suffixed word recognition. Linguistic Research 42(2): 337-363. This study examined how morphemic knowledge influences visual recognition of Sino-Korean suffixed words. Sixty-three Korean young adults completed a masked priming lexical decision task including morphological, semantic, and orthographic priming conditions. Overall results revealed significant priming effects across all conditions, with the morphological priming effect much larger than semantic and orthographic effects. More importantly, semantic and orthographic priming effects diminished or disappeared as morphemic knowledge increased, while morphological priming remained larger and stable. A further group comparison revealed a significant difference in semantic priming only; a significantly larger effect in low-knowledge group. These findings suggest that lexical processing mainly depends on morphological decomposition focusing on the morphological cues, shifting away from semantic or orthographic cues with an increase in morphemic knowledge in individuals. (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology · Korea University - Cyber University of Korea - Cyber Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)