Abstract
The length effect in word recognition refers to the phenomenon that the shorter a word is, the faster it is recognized than longer words. Korean studies reported some evidence for the opposite effect of word length: Shorter words, mono-syllabic words in particular, had a disadvantage in the lexical decision tasks (Kim, 2010; Park, 1993). One explanation for the disadvantage of very short words is that there is ideal word length—the most frequent length-- for each language. To test the ideal length, we conducted an experiment exploited the fact that there is no monosyllabic Korean verb because a verb must have an ending that marks its identity as a verb. Inconsistent with the ideal word length, the results showed the bi-syllabic word disadvantage. To develop an alternative to the ideal length hypothesis, we pay attention to the role of morphological transparency in modulating the length effect. The implications of the results to commonality and specificity of languages and writing systems were discussed.
