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Morphology and spelling
Peter Bryant and Terezinha Nunes
Unputdownable morphemes
Morphemes are units of meaning and many words are constructed from more than one morpheme
1. glad read put
2. gladly, gladness readable put down
3. unreadable putdownable
4. unputdownable
The spelling of affix morphemes (-ly, -ness, -able) is highly consistent and therefore regular in English as well as in other languages
Conditional morphological spelling rules exist in many orthographies (French, English, Greek,
Portuguese, Hebrew, Arabic) when: the same sound is spelled in different ways
fox sockseducation magicianδίνω νερό
different sounds are spelled in the same way cats dogsheal health
spelling represents morphemic distinctions that aren’t represented in speech
la maison les maisons The boys drink The boy’s drink
Residents refuse to be put in the bins
’
Three questions
Do children have particular difficulty in conforming to these morphemic rules in spelling?
What causes these difficulties?
Do children overcome these difficulties by learning about morphemic spelling rules or in some other way?
Three questions
Do children have particular difficulty in conforming to these morphemic rules in spelling?
What causes these difficulties?
Do children overcome these difficulties by learning about morphemic spelling rules or in some other way?
Phonemes, not morphemes, in invented spelling (substitution for past verb “ed” ending)
halpt likt
kild watid wotid
helped
liked
killed
waited
wanted
Charles Read, 1986
“s” or “z” for plurals in invented spelling
onges boxis
pnnez disaz owsenz
oranges
boxes
pennies
dishes
oceans
Charles Read, 1986
Spelling the endings of /d/ and /t/ non-verbs
/d/ ending /t/ ending
bird belt cold exceptfield nextgold paintground soft
Nunes, Bryant & Bindman
Mean correct phonetic spellings of non-verbs ending in /d/ or /t/ (out of 10) in 3 sessions over a
period of 21 months
0123456789
10
6yr5m 7yr5m 8yr7m
start7m later21m later
N=297
Nunes, Bryant & Bindman
Spelling the endings of regular past verbs with /d/ and /t/ inflections
/d/ ending /t/ ending
called dressedcovered kissedfilled laughed killed learnedopened stopped
Mean correct “-ed” spellings (out of 10)in 3 sessions over a period of 21 months
0123456789
10
6yr5m 7yr5m 8yr7m
start7m later21m later
N=297
Nunes, Bryant & Bindman
most of the mistakes with regular verb endings are phonetic transcriptions: e.g. “kist” for “kissed”
these inappropriate phonetic transcriptions are made even by some 10 year olds
0123456789
10
6 7 8 9 10
Phonetic endings instead of the correct “-ed” ending
Number of incorrectphonetic transcriptions of regular verb endings
Generalisations and overgeneralisations of the “-ed” ending
many children put “-eds” on the ends of irregular past verbs (sleped) (71%), and also of non-verbs (sofed, necsed) (59%) as well as of regular past verbs (kissed)
the generalisation to irregular verbs is incorrect but grammatically appropriate
the generalisation to non-verbs is incorrect and inappropriate grammatically
Nunes, Bryant & Bindman
Incorrect generalisations of the “ed” ending to irregular verbs “sleped” & to non-verbs “necsed”
at first the children make the two types of generalisation roughly equally
but by 8 yrs they make many more generalisations to irregular verbs than to non-verbs 0
0.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9
1
to non-verbsto irregvbs
Nunes, Bryant & Bindman
/d/ and /t/ endings are spelled as “d” and “t”
/d/ and /t/ endings are sometimes spelled as “d” and “t” and sometimes as “ed”
“ed” endings are for past verbs:“d” and “t” endings are for everything else
grapheme-phoneme rule
extension ofgrapheme-phoneme rule
morpho-phonemic rule
The –ion ending: how 880 children spelled four words with the “-t-ion” ending:
percent correct
0102030405060708090
100
7 to 8 8 to 9 9 to 10 10 to 11
electiondestinationcombinationemotion
τόπι(ball) νερό(water)
φωνή(voice) δίνω(I give)
μιλάμε(we talk) παιδί(child)
μήλο(apple) πόλη(town)
Sound in real word stems
Sound in real word inflections
/o/sound
/i/ sound
μιλάμε(we talk)δίνω(I give)φιλώ(I kiss)ρίχνομαι(I fly into)
τόπι (ball)παιδί (child)βόδι (ox)νησί (island)
θότινεπίσόβικιφί
ψήνει(s/he cooks)μήλο(apple)κήποι(gardens)νησί(island)
ζώνη(waistband)πόλη(town)θέση(place/seat)φωνή(voice)
λόχηκόσηρέκηβοπή
κλείνομαι(I am shut up in)θείοι(uncles)δείχνουμε(we show)πειράζει(s/he teases)
ψήνει(s/he cooks)δένει(s/he ties)πειράζει(s/he teases)κοιτάζει(s/he looks at)
πέφειγίβεισιφάγειδιπάγει
κοιμάμαι(I sleep)τοίχοι(walls)κοιτάζει(s/he looks at)ανοίγουμε(we open)
τοίχοι(walls)θείοι(uncles)κήποι(gardens)καιροί(days/times)
λίροιμίοινίγοισεποί
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
32
Session A (Mean age:6y10m)
Session B (Mean age:7y6m)
Session C (Mean age:8y6m)
Real Word Stems
Real Word Inflections
Pseudoword Inflections
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2008
Answer to first question
The conditional rules are seriously and persistently difficult for a lot of children
The degree of difficulty may vary from script to script
Three questions
Do children have particular difficulty in conforming to these morphemic rules in spelling?
What causes these difficulties?
Do children overcome these difficulties by learning about morphemic spelling rules or in some other way?
Three questions
Do children have particular difficulty in conforming to these morphemic rules in spelling?
What causes these difficulties?
Do children overcome these difficulties by learning about morphemic spelling rules or in some other way?
Not enough explicit morphological awareness?
Several studies with English speaking children show a relationship between children’s morphological awareness and their use of conventional spelling for inflections
We ourselves have used 2 main tasks to establish this relationship
Two morphological awareness tasks
Sentence analogySentence analogy:
Tom helps Mary
Tom helped Mary
Tom sees Mary
_____________
Word analogyWord analogy:
teacher taught
writer ______
walk walked
shake ______
Age
IQ
Spelling “ed”s in 1st session
Word analogy predicts correct use of “ed” 7 months later:
Outcome measure - spelling “ed”s 7 months after the 1st session
Word analogy in 1st session
Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman
13.8%
11.1%
8.0%
4. 0%
How general is the link?
Several researchers have found this predictive relationship in English-speaking children (e.g. Kirby & Deacon in Canada) and it seems to be true of Israeli (Levin) and Brazilian (Rego) children too
It is likely that it’s a 2-way street (Levin; \Nunes & Bryant)
But it may not be true of orthographies in which spelling is not conditional on morphology e.g. Finnish
Geminates Clusters
Stem prinseSSaksikimaLLukseksi
harraSTuksenapuhaLTamiseksi
Inflection
tilaisuudeSSakumppaniLLa
älykkyydeSTälasketteluLTa
A test of spelling geminates and consonant clusters given to Finnish 7-year olds
This task was given to the children at mean age 7 yrs (Time 1)and 5 months later at mean age 7yrs 5m (Time 2)
Lehtonen & Bryant, 2005
Morphological awareness and spelling geminates & clusters
At Time 1 & 2 we also gave the children a Finnish version of Berko’s Wug task, devised by Lyytinen (1988)
We used the adverb, comparative and past tense subtests
Our question was whether these scores would predict spelling of inflections more than of stems
There was no difference: the correlation between the morphological test at Time 1 and spelling at Time 2 was .48 for stem spelling and .41 for inflection spelling
Answer to second question
Children may ignore morphological spelling rules because they are not explicitly aware enough of morphological categories and morphological distinctions
It’s likely that they concentrate on phonology instead because that’s what they’re taught about
Three questions
Do children have particular difficulty in conforming to these morphemic rules in spelling?
What causes these difficulties?
Do children overcome these difficulties by learning about morphemic spelling rules or in some other way?
Three questions
Do children have particular difficulty in conforming to these morphemic rules in spelling?
What causes these difficulties?
Do children overcome these difficulties by learning about morphemic spelling rules or in some other way?
Morphemic spelling rules exist…….. But do people who eventually learn to spell words
using the conventional spellings for morphemes actually know and use the rules?
The alternative is that they learn the specific spelling of each word (“word specific” or “lexical” learning), or that they learn about a set of specific sequences
The acid test is to present children with pseudo words which have an obvious morphemic structure e.g. “Yesterday I /bopt/ along the road as I went to school”
A study of Greek children’s learning of how to spell vowel sounds in inflections and in stems
The best evidence that children actually learn morphemic spelling rules comes from Greek
Greek is a highly regular orthography as far as reading is concerned
Spelling is less predictable because there are very few vowel sounds in Greek, and more than one way of spelling three of the vowels
e.g. /i/ is represented by: ι , η , ει, οι /o/ is represented by: ο , ω /e/ is represented by: ε , αι
μιλάμε(we talk)δίνω(I give)φιλώ(I kiss)ρίχνομαι(I fly into)
τόπι (ball)παιδί (child)βόδι (ox)νησί (island)
θότινεπίσόβικιφί
ψήνει(s/he cooks)μήλο(apple)κήποι(gardens)νησί(island)
ζώνη(waistband)πόλη(town)θέση(place/seat)φωνή(voice)
λόχηκόσηρέκηβοπή
κλείνομαι(I am shut up in)θείοι(uncles)δείχνουμε(we show)πειράζει(s/he teases)
ψήνει(s/he cooks)δένει(s/he ties)πειράζει(s/he teases)κοιτάζει(s/he looks at)
πέφειγίβεισιφάγειδιπάγει
κοιμάμαι(I sleep)τοίχοι(walls)κοιτάζει(s/he looks at)ανοίγουμε(we open)
τοίχοι(walls)θείοι(uncles)κήποι(gardens)καιροί(days/times)
λίροιμίοινίγοισεποί
τόπι(ball) νερό(water) βεσό
φωνή(voice) δίνω(I give) λιβώ
μιλάμε(we talk) παιδί(child) θότι
μήλο(apple) πόλη(town) ρέκη
Sound in real word stems
Sound in pseudo-word inflections
Sound in real word inflections
/o/sound
/i/ sound
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
20
22
24
26
28
30
32
Session A (Mean age:6y10m)
Session B (Mean age:7y6m)
Session C (Mean age:8y6m)
Real Word Stems
Real Word Inflections
Pseudoword Inflections
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2008
Session A Session B Session C
RW-PW- 35 10 3
RW+PW-30 23 17
RW-PW+ 0 1 0
RW+PW+ 25 56 70
Number of children (out of 90) significantly above chance level (+) or not (-) with real word inflections (RW) and pseudo-word inflections (PW)
Chance level .375: 18+/32 above chance level
Session A Session B
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
.434**
-.036
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2007
Session A Session B
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
.434**
-.036
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2007
Session B Session C
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
.390**
-.010
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2007
Session B Session C
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
Real word inflections
Pseudoword inflections
.390**
-.010
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2007
Session A Session B
Real word stems
Pseudoword inflections
Real word stems
Pseudoword inflections
.146
.172
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2007
Session B Session C
Real word stems
Pseudoword inflections
Real word stems
Pseudoword inflections
.253
.197
Chliounaki & Bryant, 2007
Conclusions from the Chliounaki & Bryant study
Children get to spell inflections correctly in real words before pseudowords
Cross lagged correlations between real and pseudo-word spelling of inflections suggest a causal connection:
It is that word specific learning lays the basis for inferring the morphemic spelling rules
So what about learning English morphemic spelling rules?
Do English-speaking children learn the morphemic spelling rule for the plural?
In English the last sound in “buns” and “dogs” is /z/ but it is spelled as “s” because “s” is the spelling for the plural morpheme in English
Since children don’t often write “dogz” (Treiman, Read) it is possible that young children at least know the morphological rule for “s” as the plural ending
However, there is also a frequency rule: in almost every word that ends in a /z/ sound which is preceded by a consonant the /z/ ending is spelled as “s” (e.g.“dogs”)
but when the /z/ ending is preceded by a vowel sound, as in “trees” “freeze” “please”, the ending is as likely to be “ze” or “se” as “s”
The children saw two ________ at school today.
The children saw two ________ at school today.
The children saw two pleens at school today.
The children saw two prees at school today.
Percent of children’s “-s” spellings of the /z/ sound at the end of plural words and pseudo-
words
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
fibs trees pleens preesReal plural words Plural pseudo-words
Kemp & Bryant, 2003
Adults’ “-s” spellings of the /z/ sound at the end of plural pseudo-words
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
pleens prees
Secondary
Tertiary
Educational Levels
Kemp & Bryant, 2003
/z/ and /ks/ ending words We repeated the previous experiment with adults, and
extended the /z/ end sound data to one- morpheme vs two-morpheme verbs as well (finds: sees, sneeze,)
We also included words ending in /ks/ : the rule here is that : 1-morpheme words end in “x” or “xe” (I fix, six, axe) and 2-morpheme words in “cks” (he picks, socks).
In this experiment we used pseudo-words, as well as a real word control, and we gave the young adult participants a choice between two spellings
foxThe wily old was very cunning. focks
tricks That magician always his audience.
trix
yoxJim sometimes after work. yocks
gricks We have a in the garden.
grix
kleesThe children saw two at school .
kleeze.
proosThe children saw a at school .
prooze
Frequencies of correct choice for /z/ ending verbs in 205 young adults educated at school only
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
10% of sample significantly above chance
Number of correct choices out of 30
Numberof participantsout of205
Frequencies of correct choice for /z/ ending nouns in 205 young adults educated at school only
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
12% of sample significantly above chance
Number of correct choices out of 30
Numberof participantsout of205
Frequencies of correct choice for /ks/ ending verbs in 205 young adults educated at school only
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
15% of sample significantly above chance
Number of correct choices out of 30
Numberof participantsout of205
Frequencies of correct choice for /ks/ ending nouns in 205 young adults educated at school only
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
17% of sample significantly above chance
Number of correct choices out of 30
Numberof participantsout of205
Frequencies of correct choice for /z/ ending nouns in 72 young university students
0
5
10
15
20
25
14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30Number of correct choices out of 30
87.5% of sample significantly above chance
Frequencies of correct choice for /z/ ending verbs in 72 young university students
0
5
10
15
20
25
14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30Number of correct choices out of 30
83% of sample significantly above chance
Percent significantly above chance in choice of correct endings in the three samples
N z nouns ks nouns
10-14 year olds 190 40 44
20 year recruits 205 12 17
20 year students 72 88 92
The difference between the recruits and the students represents an educational and a social class fault-line
Conclusions from English and Greek studies
The developmental process of children inferring rules on the basis of their word-specific knowledge seems to work better for Greek than for English children
It also works much better for some English individuals than for others
They are probably also due to the lack of explicit teaching about morphemic spelling rules
Test of the lack of teaching idea
We gave children of 7-8 years two sessions teaching about when to use “-ion” and “-ian” endings
magic
music
history
library
Egypt
Italy
Hungary
India
magician
musician
historian
librarian
Egyptian
Italian
Hungarian
Indian
political
technical
politician
technician
protect
infect
subtract
add
confess
discuss
suggest
collect
educate
imitate
protection
infection
subtraction
addition
confession
discussion
suggestion
collection
education
imitation
Group pre-test
Two intervention sessions: pairs
Immediate post-test
Delayed post-test
Two month interval
Four kinds of intervention
We included four groups:
Explicit (morpheme) N=40 C.A. 9y6mImplicit (morpheme) N=42 C.A. 9y7mMixed (morpheme) (implicit followed by explicit)
N=42 C.A. 9y7mControl (comprehension)
N=76 C.A. 9y5m
confession
The gang made a ____________________ to the police.
musician
The __________________________ was wonderful.
Joe was a _______________ .
Christian
magic magician
?music musician
protect protection
infect ?infection
Mean correct spelling of ion/ian endings in real words (out of 16)
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
Pretest Immediate posttest
ExplicitImplicitMixedControl
Nunes, Bryant, Pretzlik & Hurry
Mean correct endings (out of 4) with pseudo- words ending in -ian
11.21.41.61.8
22.22.42.62.8
3
Pretest Immediate Posttest
ExplicitImplicitMixedControl
Morphemes change the
meaning of words
Count the morphemes and
compare them with your neighbour’s
fortunatefortunate
unun ateatefortunfortun
tiedtied
un dis im in
unun
honesthonest
un dis im in
disdis
focal
illogical
logical
To solve maths problems you need to be very ___________________.
electricians
mechanics
electrics
The people who were rewiring the house were ___________________.
Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (2006). Improving Literacy through Teaching Morphemes. London: Routledge.
Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (2009). Children’s Reading and Spelling. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell