This study investigates the role of morphological structure and paradigmatic information in the perception of Estonian inflected forms in spontaneous speech. Using a large-scale online word-typing task, we examine how segment deletion in the base or suffix, realized inflectional paradigm size, and whole-word frequency affect typing accuracy, speed, and duration. Our results indicate that reduced words are more difficult and take longer to identify and type in, and the impact of reduction depends on whether it occurs in the base or suffix. Reduction in one part of the word significantly impacts the recognition of the other part. The findings align with previous studies on morphological processing, suggesting that listeners do not rely only on the internal structure of complex words but also on the properties of the whole-word as the signal unfolds. We show that whole-word frequency influences the accuracy and speed of the typing, whereas realized inflectional paradigm size does not. Overall, our findings shed light on how listeners cope with variation in spontaneous speech and what it reveals about morphological processing, in two different modalities, speech perception and written production.
Lõo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.