| Sumario: | Psycholinguists are interested in how words are stored in human memory. The question as to whether words are stored as single root words or whether they are stored along with the affixes still remains a controversial issue. Aitchison (1987) believes that each word has a separate entry. Mackay (1978) and Taft (1981) hold that words are made of constituent morphemes. When we listen, we decompose the morphemes and when we speak, we combine them to make multimorphemic words. The decomposition view claims that only the root is stored in memory. To hypothesise this claim, a group of 50 students at the intermediate level at the preparatory department of a state university situated on the western coast of Turkey were selected. They were taught 10 root nouns and verbs and 10 complex nouns and verbs they are not familiar with. Then to see how the morphological complexity affected lexical access and which type of words were better remembered, they were tested on these words. Then the same group was given 10 simple and 10 complex words in the mother tongue and their answer times were compared. The results shed light on the validity of the decomposition theory, showcasing we remember the words in roots better.
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