TY - JOUR
T1 - Cross-linguistic differences in morphological processing
T2 - evidence from English and Italian
AU - De Simone, Elisabetta
AU - Moll, Kristina
AU - Beyersmann, Elisabeth
N1 - Copyright the Author(s) 2024. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.
PY - 2025
Y1 - 2025
N2 - Purpose: The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in orthographic transparency and morphological complexity during complex word recognition in English and Italian. If morphological processing is more important in orthographically transparent and morphemically rich languages, larger morpheme-effects should be evident in Italian. However, if morphological processing is more pronounced in orthographically opaque and morphemically sparser languages, morpheme-effects should be larger in English. Method: 60 Italian (Mage = 25.33, 34 females, Caucasian) and 60 English (Mage = 26.35, 34 females, mostly Caucasian) native-speakers completed an online lexical decision task, while reaction times and accuracy were measured. To tease apart the independent role of stems and suffixes, we employed four types of nonwords: Stem+Suffix: night+ness, Stem+NonSuffix: night-lude, NonStem+Suffix: nisht+ness, NonStem+NonSuffix: nisht-lude). Results: The results revealed a significant morpheme interference effect in both languages: nonwords with stems were read slower and less accurately than those without stems and nonwords with suffixes slower and less accurately than those without suffixes. Crucially, this observed pattern was larger in English than Italian. Also, a significant Stem by Suffix interaction suggested that Stem+Suffix nonwords were harder to reject than all others. Conclusion: The current findings suggest that morphological processing is more pronounced in opaque orthographies like English, possibly because the activation of morphemic chunks can be used to compensate for grapheme-to-phoneme inconsistencies.
AB - Purpose: The present study examined cross-linguistic differences in orthographic transparency and morphological complexity during complex word recognition in English and Italian. If morphological processing is more important in orthographically transparent and morphemically rich languages, larger morpheme-effects should be evident in Italian. However, if morphological processing is more pronounced in orthographically opaque and morphemically sparser languages, morpheme-effects should be larger in English. Method: 60 Italian (Mage = 25.33, 34 females, Caucasian) and 60 English (Mage = 26.35, 34 females, mostly Caucasian) native-speakers completed an online lexical decision task, while reaction times and accuracy were measured. To tease apart the independent role of stems and suffixes, we employed four types of nonwords: Stem+Suffix: night+ness, Stem+NonSuffix: night-lude, NonStem+Suffix: nisht+ness, NonStem+NonSuffix: nisht-lude). Results: The results revealed a significant morpheme interference effect in both languages: nonwords with stems were read slower and less accurately than those without stems and nonwords with suffixes slower and less accurately than those without suffixes. Crucially, this observed pattern was larger in English than Italian. Also, a significant Stem by Suffix interaction suggested that Stem+Suffix nonwords were harder to reject than all others. Conclusion: The current findings suggest that morphological processing is more pronounced in opaque orthographies like English, possibly because the activation of morphemic chunks can be used to compensate for grapheme-to-phoneme inconsistencies.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=86000430983&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10888438.2024.2413108
DO - 10.1080/10888438.2024.2413108
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:86000430983
SN - 1088-8438
VL - 29
SP - 181
EP - 200
JO - Scientific Studies of Reading
JF - Scientific Studies of Reading
IS - 2
ER -