摘要：A long-standing debate centers around the storage format of compounds; whether the brain does represent the internal word stmcture or simply stores compounds as whole units. Recent evidence from ERP studies strongly suggests that the brain constmcts compounds from their constituent words and only stores whole compounds under special conditions (Koester et al., 2004; 2007). If compounds are processed as sequences of constituents, the question emerges whether the serial order is equally or more important than the most important constituent which determines, for example, the semantic category of the whole compound. In contrast to such comprehension studies, compound processing poses a challenge to language production, especially regarding the ERP methodology. Even though overt speech results in movement artifacts, it is possible to investigate whether internal word stmcture plays a role in speaking using ERPs (Koester & Schiller, 2008). Knowledge about internal word stmcture is essential for speaking, e.g. for correct syllabification. To evaluate the time course of the processing of internal word stmcture, we used the fret that the production of complex words foci litates the subsequent production of picture names that were part of the previously produced complex words (Dohmes et al., 2004).
