LEXICAL RECOGNIZABILITY IN TEXT PROCESSING: A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The article examines lexical recognizability as a multidimensional psycholinguistic phenomenon emerging in connected reading rather than in isolated word paradigms. While traditional research on visual word recognition has primarily focused on orthographic, phonological, and morphological processing of single words, less attention has been devoted to how lexical access operates within coherent discourse. The study addresses this gap by analyzing lexical recognizability in literary texts, emphasizing the interaction between bottom-up lexical properties and top-down contextual constraints. The theoretical framework is based on Morris’s four-level model, which includes morphological structure, word familiarity, grammatical class (content versus function words), and lexical ambiguity. Using a qualitative analytical approach, excerpts from Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are examined to illustrate how these dimensions function dynamically in descriptive and minimalist prose. The analysis demonstrates that lexical recognition in discourse is adaptive and context-sensitive: word frequency and orthographic familiarity alone do not determine processing ease. Instead, recognition depends on the compatibility between lexical input and the developing discourse model. The findings highlight the role of morphological decomposition, phonological activation, contextual prediction, and stylistic cues in shaping word accessibility during reading. Literary context amplifies the interaction between lexical features and narrative expectations, revealing how readers integrate ambiguous, low-frequency, or morphologically complex words into coherent mental representations. The study contributes to psycholinguistics by bridging classic models of lexical access with literary text analysis and by conceptualizing lexical recognizability as a situated, integrative process in natural reading environments