Paper

Frequency modulates structural choice in Turkish suspended affixation: a latent-process account

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Abstract

Suspended affixation (SA) allows a suffix on one conjunct to scope over all coordinated elements. While inflectional SA is productive in Turkish, derivational SA is claimed to be highly restricted; yet speakers readily accept certain cases. We propose that this gradient acceptability reflects a frequency-modulated choice between two possible syntactic representations: base-generation, which licenses derivational SA, and ellipsis. To test this, we conducted a rating task on the acceptability of four derivational suffixes in SA form while manipulating the frequency of coordinations. Using a Multinomial Processing Tree model to isolate latent structural choices from surface ratings, we found that frequency modulated SA acceptability for some suffixes (i.e., -sIz `-less' and -cI `-maker'), but not others (i.e., -lI `-having' and -lIk `-for'). These findings suggest that frequency shapes syntactic parsing in morphologically complex environments.

Keywords: suspended affixation, Turkish, structural choice, frequency, derivational morphology

How to Cite:

Türk, U., Neu, E., Bakay, Ö., Dillon, B. & Jarosz, G., (2026) “Frequency modulates structural choice in Turkish suspended affixation: a latent-process account”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 9(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/scil.4046