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The role of morphemic knowledge during novel word learning
Behzadnia, Ali Ziegler, Johannes C. Colenbrander, Danielle Bürki, Audrey Beyersmann, Elisabeth
Behzadnia, Ali
Ziegler, Johannes C.
Colenbrander, Danielle
Bürki, Audrey
Beyersmann, Elisabeth
Abstract
This study used a novel word learning paradigm to investigate the role of morphology in the acquisition of complex words, when participants have no prior lexical knowledge of the embedded morphemic constituents. The influence of morphological family size on novel word learning was examined by comparing novel stems (torb) combined with large morphological families (e.g., torbnel, torbilm, torbla, torbiph) as opposed to small morphological families (e.g., torbilm, torbla). In two online experiments, participants learned complex novel words by associating words with pictures. Following training, participants performed a recognition and a spelling task where they were exposed to novel words that either did or did not contain a trained morpheme. As predicted, items consisting of a trained and an untrained constituent were harder to reject but easier to spell than those that did not contain any trained constituents. Moreover, novel words including trained constituents with large morphological families were harder to reject than those including constituents with small morphological families. The findings suggest that participants acquired novel morphemic constituents without prior knowledge of the constituents and point to the important facilitatory role of morphological family size in novel word learning.
Keywords
morphological family size, morphological structure, novel word acquisition, written training
Date
2024
Type
Journal article
Journal
Book
Volume
77
Issue
8
Page Range
1620-1634
Article Number
ACU Department
Faculty of Education and Arts
Collections
Relation URI
Event URL
Open Access Status
Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
License
CC BY 4.0
File Access
Open
Notes
For supplementary data: https://osf.io/g827m/
© Experimental Psychology Society 2023.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
© Experimental Psychology Society 2023.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).