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Morphological constancy in spelling: a comparison of children with dyslexia and typically developing children
Author(s) -
Bourassa Derrick C.,
Treiman Rebecca
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
dyslexia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.694
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1099-0909
pISSN - 1076-9242
DOI - 10.1002/dys.368
Subject(s) - spelling , morpheme , dyslexia , psychology , pronunciation , linguistics , developmental dyslexia , typically developing , root (linguistics) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , reading (process) , philosophy , autism
Abstract The spellings of many English words follow a principle of morphological constancy. For example, musician includes the c of music , even though the pronunciation of this letter changes. With other words, such as explanation and explain , the spellings of morphemes are not retained when affixes are added. We asked whether children with dyslexia use root morphemes to aid their spelling of morphologically complex words. If so, they should sometimes produce misspellings such as ‘explaination’ for explanation . Our results suggest that children with dyslexia adhere to the principle of morphological constancy to the same extent as typically developing younger children of the same spelling level. In this and other ways, the spellings of older dyslexic children are remarkably similar to those of typical younger children. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.