Structure Of Mental Lexicon

This essay will describe the mental lexicon and its structure by looking at the different parts of the lexicon as well as linguistic examples. This essay will begin by attempting to define the mental lexicon and the words that are stored within it. It will then look at the different processing components believed to be apparent within the lexicon, before looking at different theories as to how we access words within the lexicon. Finally, this essay will conclude by looking at the structure of the mental lexicon supported by experiments and various linguistic phenomena.
The mental lexicon is difficult to define in terms of its nature and structure. According to Marslen-Wilson, (1994) “the mental lexicon can be defined as the listener’s mental …show more content…
(pg90.) These three work together to translate words and meanings and find the appropriate match within the mental lexicon. Lexical selection is where a word, or lexeme, is retrieved from the mental lexicon depending on the meaning that needs to be conveyed. This is then followed by morphological encoding, where the base of the word is chosen, and phonological encoding where the syllables of the word are put together. Grammatical structure also seems to be important in understanding words in terms of their context. Ullman, (2001) states that “the meaning can be derived from rules that underlie not only the sequential order of lexical items, but also their hierarchical relations.” (pg 717) In English, the order in which the words are structured gives clues as to the meaning and application of a word and even if we do not understand the words we can still acquire a basic understanding of an idea based on how it is organised. As we do not use these processes consciously, the ability to create understanding through these different processes within the mental lexicon must occur astonishingly