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Words and Rules

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Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Synonyms

Dual-mechanism morphology; Dual-route model

Definition

“Words and rules” postulates a dual mechanism of symbolic rules and associative storage and retrieval for the production and comprehension of morphologically complex words.

Introduction

It has been suggested that the access and production of morphologically complex forms can occur via two routes (Pinker and Prince 1994). First, a morphologically complex word can be listed in the mental lexicon as a whole form and produced or comprehended by direct lookup (“words”) or alternatively, a decompositional route may be used where the complex form is parsed into a stem and a symbolic rule that applies to all stems of that category to create the complex form (“rules”). But there are also competing theoretical viewpoints that suggest that single-route models that rely solely on associative memory (Rumelhart and McClelland 1986) could also successfully reflect human performance with morphologically complex forms. This research will...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Simge Topaloğlu

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  1. Simge Topaloğlu
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Correspondence to Simge Topaloğlu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  2. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. University of South Carolina - Beaufort, Bluffton, SC, USA

    Carey Fitzgerald

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Topaloğlu, S. (2017). Words and Rules. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2413-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2413-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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