Abstract:

The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview on the state-of-the-art of the research on the neural mechanisms of morphological processing. The main debates regarding the neurocognition of morphology at the word level have revolved around the distinction between “rule-based” & “network-based” approaches. Whereas both of these model types come in several different flavours, the basic controversy between them pertains to the question of whether linguistic regularities are generated by rule-based knowledge or not. We summarize findings on inflected, derived and compound words, their interpretations with respect to current neurolinguistic models, and discuss methodological approaches as well as their possible limitations.

Key words: inflection, derivation, compounding, morphology