The Abstractness Controversy: Experimental Input from Hindi

If the grammars which linguists write are to reflect psycholdgically real constructs, then purely structural evidence is not sufficient proof of them; some form of psychological evidence is required. The psycholinguistic test described here was designed to show whether or not a Hindi word such as [gh6 sla: ] 'nest', which appears only in this form on the surface, has an underlying form with an 'abstract' a, i.e. gho:sala:. The results show that some speakers have the abstract underlying form, others do not.*