Abstract
Phonemes as well as morphemes are represented in many written languages, including English, Greek, French and Portuguese. Morphology is such an important feature of written English that it has been defined by some linguists as a morpho-phonemic script. In this chapter it is suggested that there are at least four types of situation where knowledge of morphemes is necessary for word spelling and reading: (1) when there is more than one way to represent a sequence of sounds, spelling is often determined by morphology (e.g., the end sounds of “emotion” and “magician” are the same but spelling differs for morphological reasons); (2) there may be phonological changes in the base form when an affix is added to it but the spelling of the base form is often preserved, maintaining the meaning connection between the two forms clear (e.g., the final consonant sound in “magic” changes when the suffix “ian” is added but the spelling is preserved); (3) the fixed spelling of an affix — such as the “ed” for past regular verbs — may actually flout letter sound correspondences (e.g., “list” and “kissed” have the same rime but “list” is spelled phonetically whereas “kissed” represents the past tense in a way that flouts letter-sound correspondences); and (4) sometimes a decision about where to parse words in reading is crucial for word identification and is based on the morphemes it contains (e.g., in the words “unimportat” and “uniform” the sequence “uni” is parsed differently because “un” and “uni” are the prefixes in these words, respectively).
Research showing how children learn about morphological representation is relatively recent but much has already been accomplished in this domain. The chapter presents evidence that systematic representation of morphemes in spelling is a relatively late acquisition in comparison with the systematic representation of phonemes. Evidence is also available to suggest that children’s awareness of grammar and morphology is a predictor of their later ability to represent morphemes systematically and it is thus a possible cause of progress in this aspect of literacy. Finally, intervention studies show that improving children’s awareness of morphology has a positive effect on their reading in general and their spelling of words where morphology is represented.
Preparation of this chapter was supported by grants from the ESRC and MRC. The authors are thankful to these institutions for their support.
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Suggested Further Readings
Harris, M. & Hatano, G. (1999), Learning to read and write. A cross-loiguistic perspective Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nunes, T., Bryant, P. & Bradman, M. (1997) Morphological spelling strategies: developmental stages and processes. Developmental Psychology, 33, 637–649.
Nunes, T., Bryant, P. & Olsson, J. M. (2003) Learning morphological and phonological spelling rules. An intervention study. The Scientific Study of Reading, 7, 289–307.
Perfeti, C. A., Rieben, L & Fayol, M. (1997), Learning to spell Research, Theory and Practice across Languages. Mahwah, NJ. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass.
Templeton, S. & Bear, D. R. (Eds.) (1992), Development of orthographic knowledge and the foundations of literacy. Hillsdale, NJ• Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Bryant, P., Nunes, T. (2004). Morphology and Spelling. In: Nunes, T., Bryant, P. (eds) Handbook of Children’s Literacy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1731-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1731-1_6
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