Cover not available
Part of
Theories of Reading Development
Edited by Kate Cain, Donald L. Compton and Rauno K. Parrila
[Studies in Written Language and Literacy 15] 2017
► pp. 191–214

Learning to read morphologically complex words

| University of Connecticut
Article outline
  • Setting the stage: Young students’ morphological knowledge
  • Contribution of morphological knowledge to general word reading
  • Morphemic processing in theories of early word reading
  • Do morphemes serve as units in children’s word reading?
  • Studies of polymorphemic word reading
  • What have we learned? And what next?
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/swll.15.11car
References
Adams, M. J.
(1990) Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Anglin, J. M.
(1993) Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the society for research in child development, 58, 1–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Apel, K., Diehm, E., & Apel, L.
(2013) Using multiple measures of morphological awareness to assess the relation to reading, Topics in Language Disorders, 33, 42–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Nagy, W., & Carlisle, J.
(2010) Growth in phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness in grades 1–6. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 39, 141–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, R.
(1973) A first language: The early stages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burani, C., Marcolini, S., & Stella, G.
(2002) How early does morpholexical reading develop in readers of a shallow orthography? Brain and Cognition, 81, 568–586.Google Scholar
Burani, C., Marcolini, S., De Luca, M., & Zoccolotti, P.
(2008) Morpheme-based reading aloud: Evidence from dyslexic and skilled Italian readers. Cognition, 108, 243–262. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F.
(2000) Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169–190. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Fleming, J.
(2003) Lexical processing of morphologically complex words in the elementary years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 239–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlisle J. F., & Katz, L. A.
(2006) Effects of word and morpheme familiarity on reading of derived words. Reading and Writing, 19, 669–693. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Nomanbhoy, D. M.
(1993) Phonological and morphological awareness in first graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 177–195. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Stone, C. A.
(2005) Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 428–449. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., Stone, C. A., & Katz, L. A.
(2001) The effects of phonological transparency on reading derived words. Annals of Dyslexia, 51, 249–274. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casalis, S., Colé, P., & Sopo, D.
(2004) Morphological awareness in developmental dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 54, 114–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casalis, S., Dusautoir, M., Colé, P., & Ducrot, S.
(2009) Morphological effects in children word reading: A priming study in fourth graders. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27, 761–766. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clark, E.
(1982) The young word maker: A case study of innovation in the child’s lexicon. In E. Wanner & L. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 391–425). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Colé, P., Bouton, S., Leuwers, C., Casalis, S., & Sprenger-Charolles, L. S.
(2012) Stem and derivational-suffix processing during reading by French second and third graders. Applied Psycholinguistics 33, 97–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cunningham, A. E.
(2010) Vocabulary growth through independent reading and reading aloud to children. In E. H. Hiebert & M. L. Kamil (Eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice (pp. 45–68). NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Deacon, S. H.
(2012a) Sounds, letters, and meanings: The independent influences of phonological, orthographic, and morphological skills on early word reading accuracy. Journal of Research in Reading, 35, 456–475. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2012b) Bringing development into a universal model of reading. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 284. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deacon, S. H., Tong, X., & Francis, K.
(2017) The relationship of morphological analysis and morphological decoding to reading comprehension. Journal of Research in Reading 1, 1–16. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deacon, S. H., Kieffer, M. J., & Laroche, A.
(2014) The relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension: Evidence from mediation and longitudinal models. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18, 432–451. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deacon, S. H., & Kirby, J. R.
(2004) Morphological awareness: Just “more phonological”? The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223–238. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Deacon, S. H., Whalen, R., & Kirby, J. R.
(2011) Do children see the danger in dangerous? Grade 4, 6, and 8 children’s reading of morphologically complex words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 467–481. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Luca, M., Barca, L., Burani, C., & Zoccolotti, P.
(2008) The effect of word length and other sublexical, lexical, and semantic variables on developmental reading deficits. Cognitive Behavior Neurology, 21, 227–235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eddington, D., Treiman, R., & Elzinga, D.
(2013) Syllabification of American English: Evidence from a large-scale Experiment, Part II. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 20, 75–93. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ehri, L. C.
(1995) Phases of development in learning to read words by sight. Journal of Research in Reading, 18, 116–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2005) Learning to read words: Theory, findings and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 167–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fitzgerald, J., Elmore, J, Koons, H., Hiebert, E. H., Bowen, K., Sanford-Moore, E. E., & Stenner, A. J.
(2015) Important text characteristics for early grades text complexity. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 4–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fowler, A., & Liberman, I.
(1995) The role of phonology and orthography in morphological awareness. In L. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp.131–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Frost, R.
(2012) Towards a universal model of reading. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 263–329. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frost, R., Grainger, J., & Carreiras, M.
(2008) Advances in morphological processing: An introduction. Language and Cognitive Processes, 23, 933–941. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gagl, B., Hawelka, S., & Wimmer, H.
(2015) On sources of word length effect in young readers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 19, 289–306. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, J. K., Goodwin, A. P., Compton, D. L., & Kearns, D. M.
(2013) Multisyllabic word reading as a moderator of morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37, 34–43.Google Scholar
Goswami, U., & Ziegler, J. C.
(2006) Fluency, phonology, and morphology: A response to the commentaries on becoming literate in different languages. Developmental Science, 9, 451–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jarmulowicz, L., Taran, V. L., & Hay, S. E.
(2007) Third graders’ metalinguistic skill, reading skills, and stress production in derived English words. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 1593–1605. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Just, M. A., & Carpenter, P. A.
(1987) The psychology of reading and language comprehension. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Kearns, D. M.
(2015) How elementary-age children read polysyllabic polymorphemic words. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107, 364–390. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kearns, D. M., Steacy, L. M., Compton, D. L., Gilbert, J. K., Goodwin, A. P., Cho, E., …Collins, A. A.
(2016) Modeling polymorphemic word recognition: Exploring differences among children with early-emerging and late-emerging word reading difficulty. Journal of Learning Disabilities 49, 368–394. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kirby, J. R., Deacon, S. H., Bowers, P. N., Izenberg, L., Wade-Woolley, L., & Parrila, R.
(2012) Children’s morphological awareness and reading ability. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 25, 389–410. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuo, L. J., & Anderson, R. C.
(2003) Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161–180. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kuperman, V. & Van Dyke, J. A.
(2011) Individual differences in visual comprehension of morphological complexity. In L. Carlson, C. Hoelscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, (pp. 1643–1648). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Laxon, V., Masterson, J., & Moran, R.
(1994) Are children’s representations of words distributed? Effects of orthographic neighbourhood size, consistency and regularity of naming. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 1–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Laxon, V., Rickard, M., & Coltheart, V.
(1992) Children read affixed words and nonwords. British Journal of Psychology, 83, 407–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marcolini, S., Traficante, D., Zoccolotti, P. & Burani, C.
(2011) Word frequency modulates morpheme-based reading in poor and skilled Italian readers. Applied Psycholinguistics, 32, 513–532. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mattingly, I G.
(1984) Reading, linguistic awareness, and language acquisition. In J. Downing & R. Valtin (Eds.), Language awareness and learning to read (pp. 9–25). NY: Springer-Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Minarik, E. H.
(1959) Father bear comes home. NY: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C.
(1984) How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagy, W., Berninger, V., & Abbott, R.
(2006) Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134–147. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagy, W. E., Diakidoy, I. N., & Anderson, R. C.
(1993) The acquisition of morphology: Learning the contribution of suffixes to the meanings of derivatives. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 155–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagy, W. E., Anderson, R. C., Schommer, M., Scott, J. A., & Stallma, A. C.
(1989) Morphological families in the internal lexicon. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 262–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nagy, W., & Scott, J. A.
(2000) Vocabulary processes. In M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. 3 (pp. 269–284). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Barros, R.
(2012) The development of word recognition and its significance for comprehension and fluency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 959–973. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M.
(1997) Morphological spelling strategies: Developmental stages and processes. Developmental Psychology, 33, 637–649. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pasquarella, A., Deacon, H., Chen, B. X., Commissaire, E., & Au-Yeung, K.
(2014) Acquiring orthographic processing through word reading: Evidence from children learning to read French and English. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education, 61, 240–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perfetti, C. A.
(2007) Reading ability: Lexical quality to comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 11, 357–383. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quémart, P., Casalis, S., & Colé, P.
(2011) The role of form and meaning in the processing of written morphology: A priming study in French developing readers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 109, 478–496. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Quémart, P., Casalis, S., & Duncan, L. G.
(2012) Exploring the role of bases and suffixes when reading familiar and unfamiliar words: Evidence from French young readers. Scientific Studies of Reading, 16, 424–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roman, A. A., Kirby, J. R., Parrila, R. K., Wade-Woolley, L., & Deacon, S. H.
(2009) Toward a comprehensive view of the skills involved in word reading in grades 4, 6, and 8. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 96–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rubin, H., Patterson, P., & Kantor, M.
(1991) Morphological development and writing ability in children and adults. Language, Speech, and Hearing Sciences in Schools, 22, 228–235. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H.
(1995) Modeling morphological processing. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 131–154). Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Seymour, P. H. K.
(1997) Foundations of orthographic development. In C. A. Perfetti, L. Rieben, & M. Fayol (Eds.), Learning to spell: research, theory, and practice among languages (pp. 319–337). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V.
(2000) The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 219–252. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snow, C. E.
(2010) Academic language and the challenge of reading for learning about science. Science, 328, 450–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sparks, E., & Deacon, S. H.
(2012) Morphological awareness and vocabulary acquisition: A longitudinal examination of their relationship in English-speaking children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36, 299–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spencer, M., Muse, A., Wagner, R. K., Foorman, B., Petscher, Y., Schnatschneider, C., …Bishop, D. M.
(2015) Examination of the underlying dimensions of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 28, 959–988. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Templeton, S.
(1991) Teaching and learning the English spelling system: Reconceptualizing method and purpose. Elementary School Journal, 92, 185–201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traficante, D. Marcolini, S., Luci, A., Zoccolotti, P., & Burani, C.
(2011) How do roots and suffixes influence reading of pseudowords: A study of young Italian readers with and without dyslexia. Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 777–793. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traficante, D., Marelli, M., Luzzatti, C., & Burani, C.
(2014) Influence of verb and noun bases on reading aloud derived nouns: Evidence from children with good and poor reading skills. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27, 1303–1326. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Treiman, R., & Cassar, M.
(1996) Effects of morphology on children’s spelling of final consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 63, 141–170. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tunmer, W. E., & Herriman, M. L.
(1984) The development of metalinguistic awareness: A conceptual overview. In W. E. Tunmer, C. Pratt, & M. L. Herriman (Eds.), Metalinguistic awareness in children (pp. 12–35). New York: Springer-Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tyler, A., & Nagy, W. E.
(1989) The acquisition of English derivational morphology. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 649–667. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1990) Use of derivational morphology during reading. Cognition, 36, 17–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Venezky, R. L.
(1995) How English is read: Grapheme phoneme regularity and orthographic structure in word recognition. In J. Taylor & D. R. Olson (Eds.), Scripts and literacy: Reading and learning to read alphabets, syllabaries, and characters (pp. 111–129). Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhoeven, L., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H.
(2006) Learnability of graphotactic rules in visual word identification. Learning and Instruction, 16, 538–548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
White, E. B.
(1952) Charlotte’s web. NY: Harper and Brothers.Google Scholar
Wolter, J. A., Wood, A., & D’zatko, K. W.
(2008) The influence of morphological awareness on the literacy development of first-grade children. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 40 286–298. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yap, M. J., & Balota, D. A.
(2009) Visual word recognition of multisyllabic words. Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 502–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 21 other publications

Bernstein, Stuart E., Jennifer L. Flipse, Ying Jin & Timothy N. Odegard
2020. Word and sentence level tests of morphological awareness in reading. Reading and Writing 33:6 ► pp. 1591 ff. DOI logo
Brady, Stacie & Linda H. Mason
2024. A Literature Review of Morphological Awareness Interventions and the Effects on Literacy Outcomes. Learning Disability Quarterly 47:1 ► pp. 16 ff. DOI logo
Chan, Jessica S., Lesly Wade-Woolley, Lindsay Heggie & John R. Kirby
2020. Understanding prosody and morphology in school-age children’s reading. Reading and Writing 33:5 ► pp. 1295 ff. DOI logo
Colenbrander, Danielle & Saskia Kohnen
2023. Word Reading: The Role of the Speech-Language Pathologist. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups 8:6 ► pp. 1168 ff. DOI logo
Colenbrander, Danielle, Liam Parsons, Jeffrey S. Bowers & Colin J. Davis
2022. Assessing the Effectiveness of Structured Word Inquiry for Students in Grades 3 and 5 With Reading and Spelling Difficulties: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Reading Research Quarterly 57:1 ► pp. 307 ff. DOI logo
Gonzalves, Lisa
2020. Emergent Literacy Development in Adult L2 Learners. In Handbook of Research on Cultivating Literacy in Diverse and Multilingual Classrooms [Advances in Educational Technologies and Instructional Design, ], ► pp. 41 ff. DOI logo
Gonzalves, Lisa
2021. Development and demonstration of metalinguistic awareness in adult ESL learners with emergent literacy. Language Awareness 30:2 ► pp. 134 ff. DOI logo
Gonzalves, Lisa
2021. Emergent Literacy Development in Adult L2 Learners. In Research Anthology on Adult Education and the Development of Lifelong Learners, ► pp. 1135 ff. DOI logo
Inoue, Tomohiro, George K. Georgiou, Naoko Muroya, Miyuki Hosokawa, Hisao Maekawa & Rauno Parrila
2020. Predicting the early growth of word and nonword reading fluency in a consistent syllabic orthography. Journal of Research in Reading 43:3 ► pp. 364 ff. DOI logo
Kargin, Tevhide, Birkan Guldenoglu, Hilal Gengec & Merih Toker
2023. The Importance of Morphological Knowledge in the Reading Comprehension Difficulties in a Highly Agglutinative Language: Evidence from Poor Comprehenders. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 52:2 ► pp. 653 ff. DOI logo
Kearns, Devin M. & Elfrieda H. Hiebert
2022. The Word Complexity of Primary‐Level Texts: Differences Between First and Third Grade in Widely Used Curricula. Reading Research Quarterly 57:1 ► pp. 255 ff. DOI logo
Levesque, Kyle C., Helen L. Breadmore & S. Hélène Deacon
2021. How morphology impacts reading and spelling: advancing the role of morphology in models of literacy development. Journal of Research in Reading 44:1 ► pp. 10 ff. DOI logo
Levesque, Kyle C., Michael J. Kieffer & S. Hélène Deacon
2019. Inferring Meaning From Meaningful Parts: The Contributions of Morphological Skills to the Development of Children's Reading Comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly 54:1 ► pp. 63 ff. DOI logo
Manolitsis, George, Ioannis Grigorakis & George K. Georgiou
2017. The Longitudinal Contribution of Early Morphological Awareness Skills to Reading Fluency and Comprehension in Greek. Frontiers in Psychology 8 DOI logo
Marks, Rebecca A., Danielle Labotka, Xin Sun, Nia Nickerson, Kehui Zhang, Rachel L. Eggleston, Chi-Lin Yu, Yuuko Uchikoshi, Fumiko Hoeft & Ioulia Kovelman
2023. Morphological awareness and its role in early word reading in English monolinguals, Spanish–English, and Chinese–English simultaneous bilinguals. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 26:2 ► pp. 268 ff. DOI logo
Park, Jeong Hyun, Li-Jen Kuo, Quentin Dixon & Haemin Kim
2022. Korean-english Bilingual Children’s Stress Cue Sensitivity and its Relationship with Reading in English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 51:2 ► pp. 397 ff. DOI logo
Sabatini, John, Arthur C. Graesser, John Hollander & Tenaha O'Reilly
2023. A framework of literacy development and how AI can transform theory and practice. British Journal of Educational Technology 54:5 ► pp. 1174 ff. DOI logo
Shalhoub-Awwad, Yasmin
2020. The Role of Nominal Word Pattern in Arabic Reading Acquisition: Insights from Cross-modal Priming. Scientific Studies of Reading 24:4 ► pp. 307 ff. DOI logo
Shalhoub-Awwad, Yasmin
2023. The role of verbal patterns in Arabic reading acquisition: insights from cross-modal priming. Reading and Writing 36:3 ► pp. 649 ff. DOI logo
Steacy, Laura M., Valeria M. Rigobon, Ashley A. Edwards, Daniel R. Abes, Nancy C. Marencin, Kathryn Smith, James D. Elliott, Lesly Wade-Woolley & Donald L. Compton
2022. Modeling Complex Word Reading: Examining Influences at the Level of the Word and Child on Mono- and Polymorphemic Word Reading. Scientific Studies of Reading 26:6 ► pp. 527 ff. DOI logo
TIBI, SANA, JAMIE L. TOCK & JOHN R. KIRBY
2019. The development of a measure of root awareness to account for reading performance in the Arabic language: A development and validation study. Applied Psycholinguistics 40:2 ► pp. 303 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.