What is it about?
The term compositionality refers to the extent to which the meaning of an expression can be derived from its constituent parts plus the way they are combined. We have analysed which word properties best explained informants’ decomposability judgments about Catalan adjectives. Adjective length emerged as the strongest predictor, while suffix family size and stem complexity contributed modestly.
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Why is it important?
Our findings support dual-route models of lexical access, suggesting that speakers alternate between holistic and decomposed processing depending on word properties. By revealing how bilingual speakers interpret morphological complexity in written language, this study contributes to bridging theoretical morphology and psycholinguistic processing, laying the groundwork for future comparative, developmental, and cross-modal investigations.
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This page is a summary of: Catalan speakers’/writers’ awareness of adjective
compositionality, Written Language & Literacy, December 2025, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/wll.00099.alb.
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