Morphological Processes in Language Production

Abstract

Morphology refers to the set of linguistic processes that govern the composition of words from stored units called morphemes, which encode information about meaning and grammatical properties. Neuropsychological studies suggest that morphological operations can be spared or impaired in the setting of acquired brain damage. Moreover, specific patterns of breakdown in morphology have revealed major principles underlying the neural architecture of language. Here we make the case that the language production system has at least three components with discrete neural substrates: one component that represents lexical concepts and is organized according to meaning; a second component that processes morphological information linked to grammatical function; and a third component that converts lexical and morphological representations into specific output forms.