Phonotactic and Morphological Effects in the Acceptability of Pseudowords Jeremy M. Needle, Northwestern University Janet B. Pierrehumbert, University of Oxford Jennifer B. Hay, University of Canterbury Author Note Jeremy M. Needle, Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University. Janet B. Pierrehumbert, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford; Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University; New Zealand Institute of Language Brain and Behaviour, University of Canterbury. Jennifer B. Hay, Department of Linguistics, University of Canterbury; New Zealand Institute of Language Brain and Behaviour, University of Canterbury. This paper was presented at the 2017 Workshop on Morphological Typology and Linguistic Cognition, held at the Linguistic Institute in Lexington, KY. It has been accepted for the volume Morphological Typology and Linguistic Cognition, edited by Andrea Sims & Adam Ussishkin. This project was made possible through a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeremy M. Needle, Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208. Contact:
[email protected] Page 2 of 40 Abstract We develop a large set of pseudowords that systematically varies length and phonotactic probability, and obtain acceptability ratings using an online interface. We find that phonotactic likelihood and the presence of an apparent morphological parse both significantly predict acceptability; pseudowords containing known morphemes are more acceptable than otherwise comparable pseudowords that do not. We find support for the conjecture that novel words with apparent morphology are advantaged as additions to the lexicon. The resulting lexicon, as observed, is one in which long words are not a random sampling of phonotactically acceptable wordforms, but instead tend to be completely or partially decomposable into morphemes.