Abstract
Many new words middle school children encounter in books they read are relatively transparent derived forms whose meanings might be figured out through analysis of the word parts. Of importance is whether students can not only read and recognize the structure of morphologically complex words but also determine their meanings. This issue was addressed by investigating the relationship of third and fifth graders' awareness of the structure and meanings of derived words and the relationship of these forms of morphological awareness to word reading and reading comprehension. The results showed that awareness of structure was significantly related to the ability to define morphologically complex words; some aspects were also significantly related to the reading of derived words. The three morphology tasks accounted for significant variance in reading comprehension at both grade levels, but the contribution was stronger for the fifth than the third grade. It may be educationally noteworthy that morphological analysis contributed significantly to reading comprehension for the third graders because they are presumably just beginning to learn to read and understand morphologically complex words.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
References
Anglin, J.M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 58, Serial #238.
Brittain, M.M. (1970). Inflectional performance and early reading achievement, Reading Research Quarterly 6: 34–48.
Carlisle, J.F. (1988). Knowledge of derivational morphology and spelling ability in fourth, sixth, and eighth graders, Applied Psycholinguistics 9: 247–266.
Carlisle, J.F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In: L.B. Feldman (ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Carlisle, J.F. & Nomanbhoy, D. (1993). Phonological and morphological development, Applied Psycholinguistics 14: 177–195.
Carroll, J.B., Davies, P. & Richman, B. (1971). Word frequency book. New York: American Heritage Publication Co.
Champion, A. (1997). Knowledge of suffixed words: A comparison of reading disabled and nondisabled readers, Annals of Dyslexia 47: 29–55.
Chialant, D. & Caramazza, A. (1995). Where is morphology and how is it processed? In: L. Feldman (ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 55–76). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Chomsky, C. (1970). Reading, writing, and phonology, Harvard Educational Review 40: 287–309.
Cole, P., Beauvillain, C. & Segui, J. (1989). On the representation and processing of prefixed and suffixed derived words: A differential frequency effect, Journal of Memory and Language 28: 1–13.
Derwing, B.L. (1976). Morpheme recognition and the learning of rules for derivational morphology, Canadian Journal of Linguistics 21: 38–66.
Elbro, C. & Arnbak, E. (1996). The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia, Annals of Dyslexia 46: 209–240.
Fowler, A.E. & Liberman, I.Y. (1995). The role of phonology and orthography in morpholo-gical awareness. In: L.B. Feldman (ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 157–188). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Freyd, P. & Baron, J. (1982). Individual differences in acquisition of derivational morphology, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 21: 282–295.
Jones, N.K. (1991). Development of morphophonemic segments in children's mental representations of words, Applied Psycholinguistics 12: 217–239.
Leong, C.K. (1989). Productive knowledge of derivational rules in poor reader, Annals of Dyslexia 39: 94–115.
Litowitz, B. (1976). Learning to make definitions, Journal of Child Language 4: 289–304.
Mahoney, D. (1994). Using sensitivity to word structure to explain variance in high school and college level reading ability, Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal 6: 19–44.
Nagy, W.E. & Anderson, R. (1984). The number of words in printed school English, Reading Research Quarterly 19: 304–330.
Napps, S.E. (1989). Morphemic relationships in the lexicon: Are they distinct from semantic and formal relationships?, Memory and Cognition 17: 729–739.
Schreuder, R. & Baayen, R.H. (1995). Modeling morphological processing. In: L.B. Feldman (ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 131–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Snow, C.E. (1990). The development of definitional skill, Journal of Child Language 17: 697–710.
Templeton, S. & Scarborough-Franks, L. (1985). The spelling's the thing: Knowledge of derivational morphology in orthography and phonology among older students, Applied Psycholinguistics 6: 371–390.
Tyler, A. & Nagy, W. (1989). The acquisition of English derivational morphology, Journal of Memory and Language 28: 649–667.
Tyler, A. & Nagy, W. (1990). Use of derivational morphology during reading, Cognition 36: 17–34.
Windsor, J. (1994). Children's comprehension and production of derivational suffixes, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 37: 408–417.
Wysocki, K. & Jenkins, J.R. (1987). Deriving word meanings through morphological generalization, Reading Research Quarterly 22: 66–81.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Carlisle, J.F. Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing 12, 169–190 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008131926604
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008131926604
- Linguistic awareness
- Morphology
- Reading comprehension
- Structural analysis
- Vocabulary growth
- Wordreading