Highlights:
• Number morphemes are typically placed closer to noun stems than case across languages.
• We show that this order is strongly preferred by learners of an artificial language.
• The preference holds for learners with different native languages (English and Japanese).
• It can be influenced by a bias for adjacent dependencies, but not by morpheme frequency.
• Results support the hypothesis that cognitive biases influence morpheme order.
Saldana, C., Oseki, Y., & Culbertson, J. (2021). Cross-linguistic patterns of morpheme order reflect cognitive biases: An experimental study of case and number morphology. Journal of Memory and Language, 118, 104204.
