Causes and Consequences of Word Structure

This dissertation explores effects of speech perception strategies upon morphological structure. Two factors known to be relevant to the segmentation of words from the speech stream are investigated one prelexical, and one lexical. Prelexically, I examine the role of probabilistic phonotactics. At the lexical level, I investigate the role of lexical frequency. I argue that both factors exert a strong influence on the processing of complex words. This summary briefly outlines the evidence for three major claims of the dissertation.