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Article published In:
The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 14:1 (2019) ► pp.1–36

Spelling errors in English derivational suffixes reflect morphological boundary strength

A case study

| University of California at Berkeley
| Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf

To what extent do speakers decompose morphologically complex words, such as segmentable, into their morphological constituents? In this article, we argue that spelling errors in English affixes reflect morphological boundary strength and degrees of segmentability. In support of this argument, we present a case study examining the spelling of the suffixes -able/-ible, -ence/-ance, and -ment in an online resource (Tweets), in forms such as <availible>, <invisable>, <eloquance>, and <bettermint>. Based on previous research on morphological productivity and boundary strength (Hay, 2002; Hay & Baayen, 2002, 2005), we hypothesized that morphological segmentability should affect the choice between <able> vs. <ible>, <ance> vs. <ence>, and <ment> vs. <-mint>. An analysis of roughly 23,000 non-standard spellings is consistent with that hypothesis, underscoring the usefulness of spelling variation as a source of evidence for morphological segmentability and for the role of morphological representations in language production and comprehension.

Keywords: spelling, misspellings, derivation, affixes, orthography, morphological boundaries, morphology
Article outline
  • Background
    • Morphological boundary strength
    • Morphological boundaries and typing speed
    • Target suffixes
      • able/ible
      • -ance/-ence
      • -ment
    • Other factors likely to affect spelling difficulty
  • Methods
    • Target words
    • Data collection
    • Statistical modeling strategies
    • Descriptions of variables
      • Base type
      • Base complexity
      • Length
      • Target bigram
      • Variant bigram
      • Target frequency
      • Base frequency
  • Results
    • Properties of the target suffixes and target words
    • Modeling results
      • -ible/-able
      • -ance/-ence
      • -ment
    • Summary of results
  • Discussion
    • Typicality vs. Segmentability
    • Base complexity
    • Variant bigram probability
    • Target bigram probability
    • The role of boundary strength in spelling variation
    • Limitations
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 11 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.19002.gah
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