  The momentum-space cut-off parameter $\Lambda$ of hadronic vertex functions
is studied in this paper. We use a composite model where we can measure the
contributions of intermediate particle propagations to $\Lambda$. We show that
in many cases a composite vertex function has a much smaller cut-off than its
constituent vertices, particularly when light constituents such as pions are
present in the intermediate state. This suggests that composite
meson-baryon-baryon vertex functions are rather soft, i.e., they have \Lambda
considerably less than 1 GeV. We discuss the origin of this softening of form
factors as well as the implications of our findings on the modeling of nuclear
reactions.
