The suffixing preference: a processing explanation
Cross-linguistic studies of morphology have demonstrated that there is an asymmetry in the type of affixation preferred: languages which would he predicted on independent structural grounds to prefer suffixes to prefixes do so, but languages which would be predicted to prefer prefixes to suffixes also show a tendency toward suffixation. In other words, independently of other structural considerations there is an overall preference for suffix morphology. It is argued here that this preference results from the way language is processed by its users. Two lines of psycholinguistic evidence are drawn upon: (1) word onsets are more psychologically salient than other parts of the word; (2) stems and affixes are processed separately. In the light of these considerations it is argued that language users prefer to process stems before affixes, and for this reason languages prefer to order stems before affixes. Thus the linguistic and psycholinguistic evidence combine to suggest an explanation which has implications both for language typology and for the structure of psychological models of language processing.