Literacy-related differences in morphological knowledge: A nonce-word study

Frontiers in Psychology

Psychology

Ewa Dąbrowska¹  Miquel Llompart²  Beatriz Macías-Gómez-Estern³  Esther Pascual⁴ 

[1] Chair of Language and Cognition, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany;Department of English Language and Linguistics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom;Chair of Language and Cognition, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany;Department of Translation and Language Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain;Department of Social Anthropology, Basic Psychology and Public Health, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain;Institute of Linguistics, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai, China;

关键词: literacy;    individual differences;    morphological productivity;    Spanish;    verbal morphology/derivation;    imperfect;    preterite;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1136337

 received in 2023-01-02, accepted in 2023-03-29,  发布年份 2023

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Using a nonce-word inflection task, we examine the morphosyntactic productivity of adult native speakers of Spanish who are either beginning to learn to read and write (semi-literates) or have acquired literacy in late adulthood (late-literates), as well as age-matched controls (high-literates). High-literates consistently provided the appropriate form more often than late-literates, who in turn were better than semi-literate participants. Crucially, group interacted with person, number, and conjugation, such that the between-group differences were larger for the less frequent cells in the paradigm, indicating that literacy-related differences are not merely a consequence of the high-literacy group being more engaged or test-wise. This suggests that the availability of written representations may facilitate the acquisition of certain aspects of grammar. We also observed vast individual differences in productivity with inflectional endings. These results add to the growing body of research which challenges the assumption that all native speakers converge on the same grammar early in development.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
Copyright © 2023 Dąbrowska, Pascual, Macías-Gómez-Estern and Llompart.