Noun durations with and without suffixes across ages

Temporal properties of words are defined by several physiological, psychical, and language-specific factors that interact with each other in spontaneous speech. Storage of lexical representations either in a morphologically decomposed form or in a conceptually non-decomposed form is supposed to influence word durations, particularly during language acquisition. To access the appropriate suffix and combination of stem and suffix requires greater mental effort from children than from adults. The process is assumed to result in longer word durations. The goal of the present study is to analyse the possible changes in word durations depending on the morphological structure of words across ages. We assumed that the duration of words with and without suffixes would show age-specific differences.
Hungarian nouns with various lengths (containing 2, 3 and 4 syllables with and without suffixes) produced by 30 children (ages of 5, 7 and 9) and 10 young adults in spontaneous utterances were measured. Word durations revealed significant differences depending on age and on the words’ morphological structures. Monomorphemic nouns were shorter than multimorphemic nouns of the same length in all experimental groups. Durational differences between monomorphemic and multimorphemic nouns, however, showed gradual changes according to age, being larger in younger children and smaller in older children and adults.
Our interpretation is that the longer route of lexical access for multimorphemic words in young children can be explained by their developing routine for accessing the suffixes fast and for combining stems and suffixes.