Processing derived verbs: the role of motor-relatedness and type of morphological priming

There is no consensus on whether derived words are decomposed or processed holistically, and on which factors this depends. Using overt visual priming with lexical decision involving Dutch derived particle verbs, we manipulated three factors: semantic transparency of the derived words, motor-relatedness of the simple verb constituent, and type of morphological priming. Experiments 1 and 2 (using simple verbs primed by their derivations or vice versa) showed overall facilitatory morphological priming effects, independent of transparency or motor-relatedness. In Experiment 3 (using priming between the derivation and a word semantically related to its stem), only transparent motor-related derivations were primed. The combined results suggest that the processing of derivations is influenced by priming type: constituent priming (Exp. 1 & 2) may induce a bias towards a decompositional processing strategy, possibly by directing attention to the stimuli's morphological structure. The role of motor-relatedness is discussed in the context of embodied cognition theory.