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 , , , and . 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 vs. , vs. , and 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: orthography, morphological boundaries, derivation, affixes, morphology, misspellings, spelling
This article is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

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

Full-text

Spelling errors in English derivational suffixes reflect morphological boundary strength
References

References

Adams, V.
(2001) Complex words in English. Longman.Google Scholar
Assink, E. M.
(1985) Assessing spelling strategies for the orthography of Dutch verbs. British Journal of Psychology, 76(3), 353–363. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H.
(2014) Experimental and psycholinguistic approaches to studying derivation. Handbook of derivational morphology, 95–117.Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Feldman, L. B., & Schreuder, R.
(2006) Morphological influences on the recognition of monosyllabic monomorphemic words. Journal of Memory and Language, 55(2), 290–313. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baayen, R. H., Piepenbrock, R., & Gulikers, L.
(1995) The CELEX lexical database (release 2). Distributed by the Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Badecker, W., Hillis, A., & Caramazza, A.
(1990) Lexical morphology and its role in the writing process: Evidence from a case of acquired dysgraphia. Cognition, 35(3), 205–243. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Balota, D. A., Yap, M. J., Hutchison, K. A., Cortese, M. J., Kessler, B., Loftis, B., … Treiman, R.
(2007) The English Lexicon Project. Behavior Research Methods, 39(3), 445–459. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bar-On, A., & Kuperman, V.
(2019) Spelling errors respect morphology: a corpus study of Hebrew orthography. Reading and Writing, 32.5, 1107–1128. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, L., Lieber, R., & Plag, I.
(2013) The Oxford reference guide to English morphology. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Baus, C., Strijkers, K., & Costa, A.
(2013) When does word frequency influence written production? Frontiers in Psychology, 4. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bertram, R., Tønnessen, F. E., Strömqvist, S., Hyönä, J., & Niemi, P.
(2015) Cascaded processing in written compound word production. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, 207.Google Scholar
Bloomer, R. H.
(1956) Word length and complexity variables in spelling difficulty. The Journal of Educational Research, 49 (7), 531–536. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Blumenthal-Dramé, A., Glauche, V., Bormann, T., Weiller, C., Musso, M., & Kortmann, B.
(2017) Frequency and chunking in derived words: a parametric fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 32 ]
Brysbaert, M., & New, B.
(2009) Moving beyond kučera and francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavior Research Methods, 41 (4), 977–990. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cahen, L. S., Craun, M. J., & Johnson, S. K.
(1971) Spelling diffculty: A survey of the research. Review of Educational Research, 41 (4), 281–301.Google Scholar
Caramazza, A., Miceli, G., Villa, G., & Romani, C.
(1987) The role of the graphemic buffer in spelling: Evidence from a case of acquired dysgraphia. Cognition, 26 (1), 59–85. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F.
(1988) Knowledge of derivational morphology and spelling ability in fourth, sixth, and eighth graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9 (3), 247–266. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, N., & Halle, M.
(1968) The sound pattern of English.Google Scholar
Cohen, C.
(2014) Probabilistic reduction and probabilistic enhancement. Morphology, 24 (4), 291–323. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crump, M. J. C., & Logan, G. D.
(2010) Warning: This keyboard will deconstruct – the role of the keyboard in skilled typewriting. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17 (3), 394–399. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, A.
(2011) Slips of the tongue and language production. Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Davies, M.
(2013) The Corpus of Contemporary American English (full text on CD): 440 million words, 1990–2012.Google Scholar
Delattre, M., Bonin, P., & Barry, C.
(2006) Written spelling to dictation: Sound-to-spelling regularity affects both writing latencies and durations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(6), 1330.Google Scholar
Dell, G. S.
(1986) A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological review, 93(3), 283. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Deorowicz, S., & Ciura, M. G.
(2005) Correcting spelling errors by modelling their causes. International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, 15, 275–285.Google Scholar
Dressler, W.
(1985) Morphonology. Ann Arbor: Karoma.Google Scholar
Falkauskas, K., & Kuperman, V.
(2015) When experience meets language statistics: Individual variability in processing English compound words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(6), 1607.Google Scholar
Fayol, M., Largy, P., & Lemaire, P.
(1994) Cognitive overload and orthographic errors: When cognitive overload enhances subject–verb agreement errors. a study in French written language. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47(2), 437–464. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gagné, C. L., & Spalding, T. L.
(2014) Typing time as an index of morphological and semantic effects during English compound processing. Lingue e linguaggio, 13(2), 241–262.Google Scholar
(2016a) Effects of morphology and semantic transparency on typing latencies in English compound and pseudocompound words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(9), 1489.Google Scholar
(2016b) Written production of English compounds: effects of morphology and semantic transparency. Morphology, 26(2), 133–155. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gentry, J.
(2015) twitter: R based twitter client [Computer software manual]. Retrieved from https://​CRAN​.R​-project​.org​/package​=twitteR (R package version 1.1.9)
[ p. 33 ]
Hay, J.
(2001) Lexical frequency in morphology: is everything relative? Linguistics, 39 (6), 1041–1070. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2002) From speech perception to morphology: Affix ordering revisited. Language, 78 (3), 527–555. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2003) Causes and Consequences of Word Structure. New York: Routledge. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2007) The phonetics of ‘un’. Lexical creativity, texts and contexts, 39–57. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hay, J., & Baayen, H.
(2002) Parsing and productivity. In Yearbook of Morphology (pp. 203–235). Springer Netherlands. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2005) Shifting paradigms: gradient structure in morphology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (7), 342–348. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hay, J., & Plag, I.
(2004) What constrains possible suffix combinations? On the interaction of grammatical and processing restrictions in derivational morphology. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 22 (3), 565–596. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kawaletz, L., & Plag, I.
(2015) Predicting the semantics of English nominalizations: a frame-based analysis of -ment suffixation. In L. Bauer, P. Stekauer, & L. Kortvelyessy (Eds.), Semantics of Complex Words (pp. 289–319). Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Kemps, R. J. J. K., Ernestus, M., Schreuder, R., & Baayen, R. H.
(2005) Prosodic cues for morphological complexity: The case of Dutch plural nouns. Memory & Cognition, 33 (3), 430–446. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, P.
(1982) Lexical morphology and phonology. In I.-S. Yang (Ed.), Linguistics in the Morning Calm: Selected Papers from SICOL (pp. 3–91). Seoul: Hanshin.Google Scholar
Kuperman, V., & Bertram, R.
(2013) Moving spaces: Spelling alternation in English noun-noun compounds. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28 (7), 939–966. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kuperman, V., Pluymaekers, M., Ernestus, M., & Baayen, H.
(2007) Morphological predictability and acoustic duration of interfixes in Dutch compounds. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121(4), 2261–2271. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, E., Kandel, S., Fayol, M., & Espéret, E.
(2008) The effect of the number of syllables on handwriting production. Reading and Writing, 21(9), 859–883. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Largy, P.
(1996) The homophone effect in written French: The case of verb-noun inflection errors. Language and cognitive processes, 11(3), 217–256. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lee-Kim, S.-I., Davidson, L., & Hwang, S.
(2013) Morphological effects on the darkness of English intervocalic /l/. Laboratory Phonology, 4(2), 475–511. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Libben, G., Jarema, G., & Luke, J.
(May 2018) Same words, different languages: Examining English-French written word recognition and production. Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistics Association, Regina, Canada. https://​brocku​.ca​/social​-sciences​/applied​-linguistics​/people​/gary​-libben​/#publications072e​-2dd8
Libben, G., & Weber, S.
(2014) Semantic transparency, compounding, and the nature of independent variables. In F. Rainer, F. Gardani, H. C. Luschützky, & W. U. Dressler (Eds.), Morphology and Meaning (pp. 205–221). Amsterdam / Philadelphia: Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Libben, G., Weber, S., & Miwa, K.
(2012) P3: A technique for the study of perception, production, and participant properties. The Mental Lexicon, 7(2), 237–248. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 34 ]
Mahony, D. L.
(1994) Using sensitivity to word structure to explain variance in high school and college level reading ability. Reading and Writing, 6(1), 19–44. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Marchand, H.
(1969) The categories and types of present-day English word-formation (2nd ed.). München: Verlag C. H. Beck.Google Scholar
Nottbusch, G., Grimm, A., Weingarten, R., & Will, U.
(2005) Syllabic sructures in typing: Evidence from deaf writers. Reading and Writing, 18(6), 497–526. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Plag, I.
(2003) Word-formation in English. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2014) Phonological and phonetic variability in complex words: An uncharted territory. Italian Journal of Linguistics/Rivista di Linguistica, 26(2), 209–228.Google Scholar
Plag, I., & Baayen, R. H.
(2009) Suffix ordering and morphological processing. Language, 85, 106–149.Google Scholar
Plag, I., & Ben Hedia, S.
(2018) The phonetics of newly derived words: Testing the effect of morphological segmentability on affix duration. In S. Arndt-Lappe, A. Braun, C. Moulin, & E. Winter-Froemel (Eds.), Expanding the Lexicon: Linguistic Innovation, Morphological Productivity, and the Role of Discourse-related Factors (pp. 93–116). Berlin, New York: de Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
R Development Core Team
(2008) R: A language and environment for statistical computing [Computer software manual]. Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from https://​www​.R​-project​.org/ (ISBN 3-900051-07-0)
Rahmanian, S., & Kuperman, V.
(2019) Spelling errors impede recognition of correctly spelled word forms. Scientific Studies of Reading, 23 (1), 24–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rapp, B., & Fischer-Baum, S.
(2014) Representation of orthographic knowledge. The Oxford handbook of language production, 338.Google Scholar
Roux, S., McKeeff, T. J., Grosjacques, G., Afonso, O., & Kandel, S.
(2013) The interaction between central and peripheral processes in handwriting production. Cognition, 127 (2), 235–241. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sahel, S., Nottbusch, G., Grimm, A., & Weingarten, R.
(2008) Written production of German compounds: Effects of lexical frequency and semantic transparency. Written Language & Literacy, 11 (2), 211–227.Google Scholar
Sandra, D.
(2010) Homophone dominance at the whole-word and sub-word levels: Spelling errors suggest full-form storage of regularly inflected verb forms. Language and speech, 53 (3), 405–444. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sandra, D., & Fayol, M.
(2003) Spelling errors with a view on the mental lexicon: Frequency and proximity effects in misspelling homophonous regular verb forms in Dutch and French. Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs, 151, 485–514.Google Scholar
Sandra, D., Frisson, S., & Daems, F.
(1999) Why simple verb forms can be so difficult to spell: The influence of homophone frequency and distance in Dutch. Brain and language, 68 (1–2), 277–283. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2004) Still errors after all those years…: Limited attentional resources and homophone frequency account for spelling errors on silent verb suffixes in Dutch. Written Language & Literacy, 7 (1), 61–77. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 35 ]
Scaltritti, M., Arfé, B., Torrance, M., & Peressotti, F.
(2016) Typing pictures: Linguistic processing cascades into finger movements. Cognition, 156, 16–29. Retrieved from CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schmitz, T., Chamalaun, R., & Ernestus, M.
(2018) The Dutch verb-spelling paradox in social media. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 35 (1), 111–124. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Seyfarth, S., Garellek, M., Gillingham, G., Ackerman, F., & Malouf, R.
(2017) Acoustic differences in morphologically-distinct homophones. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 1–18.Google Scholar
Siegel, D.
(1979) Topics in English morphology. Garland.Google Scholar
Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V.
(2000) The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and writing, 12 (3), 219–252. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Smith, R., Baker, R., & Hawkins, S.
(2012) Phonetic detail that distinguishes prefixed from pseudo-prefixed words. Journal of Phonetics, 40 (5), 689–705. Retrieved from {http://​www​.sciencedirect​.com​/science​/article​/pii​/S0095447012000356}. Crossref
Solso, R. L., & Juel, C. L.
(1980) Positional frequency and versatility of bigrams for two-through nine-letter English words. Behavior Research Methods, 12 (3), 297–343. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, K.
(2007) Predicting children’s word-spelling difficulty for common English words from measures of orthographic transparency, phonemic and graphemic length and word frequency. British Journal of Psychology, 98(2), 305–338. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sproat, R., & Fujimura, O.
(1993) Allophonic variation in English /l/ and its implications for phonetic implementation. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 291–311.Google Scholar
Twitter
(2006) Twitter. Retrieved from {https://​twitter​.com}
Vannest, J., Newport, E. L., Newman, A. J., & Bavelier, D.
(2011) Interplay between morphology and frequency in lexical access: The case of the base frequency effect. Brain Research, 1373, 144–159. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Weingarten, R., Nottbusch, G., & Will, U.
(2004) Morphemes, syllables and graphemes in written word production. In T. Pechmann & C. Habel (Eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to language production (pp. 529–572). Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wikipedia
(2017) Wikipedia:lists of common misspellings — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from {https://​en​.wikipedia​.org​/wiki​/Wikipedia:Lists​_of​_common​_misspellings} ([Online; accessed 04 September 2017])
Zirkel, L.
(2010) Prefix combinations in English: Structural and processing factors. Morphology, 20(1), 239–266. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 36 ]