Abstract
The processing of morphologically complex words has been studied in many languages, leading to a variety of theoretical accounts. Prime type, individual differences, and cross-linguistic effects have emerged as potential factors in morphological processing, but the findings so far have been inconclusive, especially for young children. This study investigated the early stages of morphological processing in Turkish-speaking children using the visual masked priming paradigm. We used different prime conditions (truly suffixed, pseudo-suffixed, non-suffixed, and semantic) and measured reading proficiency skills (vocabulary, spelling, reading speed, and comprehension) to investigate whether prime types or individual differences modulate early word processing. Our sample of children showed priming effects for truly suffixed words, without sound differences between derived and inflected primes in their reaction times. The reaction times of the participants decreased with increasing reading proficiency in the experimental conditions. The results suggest a sensitivity for suffixes in the early word processing of Turkish primary school children rather than sensitivities for pseudo-suffixes, orthographic overlap, or semantic similarity.
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The data and the R-script used for analyses are available on https://osf.io/dyb9w/?view_only=d027a43432984f29a19ca3c0b1662598. The files will be made public after the publication.
Notes
We follow the standard conventions of Turkish linguistics by using capital letters in morphemes to indicate underspecified vowels which undergo vowel harmony. –lA stands for the two surface-level variations of the suffix: -le and -la. In the case of –lI, these are –lı, -li, –lu, and –lü.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Hasibe Kahraman for her contribution to the R-script, Ozan Çağlar and Esra Ataman for their suggestions on the analyses, and Martina Gračanin Yüksek and Özgür Aydın for their suggestions on the study design.
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Oğuz, E., Kırkıcı, B. The processing of morphologically complex words by developing readers of Turkish: a masked priming study. Read Writ 36, 2053–2080 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10377-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-022-10377-0