The acquisition of morphophonology The role of phonology and vocabulary in TD children and children with developmental dyslexia Handout Tiffany Boersma, Judith Rispens, Anne Baker, Fred Weerman ACLC, University of Amsterdam Introduction Results Logistic generalized mixed effects model with binary data What factors influence the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations? Phonological processing skills? Phonological composition of the verb stem influences past tense accuracy in English speaking TD children (Oetting & Horohov, 1997; Blom et al., 2012) Allomorph type plays a role in diminutive acquisition (Den Os & Harder, 1987; Peelaerts, 2012) Vocabulary size? Vocabulary development is a strong predictor of morphological and syntactic development (Marchman et al., 2004; Blom & Paradis, 2013; Kidd & Kirjavainen, 2011) Reading problems? Morphological processing deficits in children with developmental dyslexia are a consequence of their phonological processing deficits (Robertson et al. 2012) Does having developmental dyslexia influence the acquisition of morphophonemic alternations? TD or dyslexia did not predict production accuracies PPVT (trend) Z = 1.699, p = .0893 Past tense existing & novel: TD: Five year olds significantly lower than other ages Past tense pseudo: Variation between children considerable No significant predictors Differences TD and dyslexia only between 5;0 -5;11 year olds and children with dyslexia Significant predictors diminutive marking Diminutive existing: Phonological awareness Z = 2.261, p = .0238 TD: Progression with age No differences TD and dyslexia PPVT Z = 2.463, p = .0138 Diminutive novel: TD: Only progression in 8 year olds Nonword repetition Z = 2.499, p = .0125 More variation children with dyslexia on diminutive novel nouns Digit span (trend) Z = -1.825, p = .0681 Significant predictors past tense marking Past tense existing: Phonological awareness Z = 2.342, p = .0192 Methods Children Age Mean age (SD) N TD 5;0 – 5;11 66.43 (.479) 42 6;0 – 6;11 78.56 (.669) 25 7;0 – 7;11 89.25 (.800) 23 8;0 – 9;0 102.79 (1.214) 14 Dyslexia 8;0 – 10;0 112.32 (7.15) 19 Difference TD or dyslexia? Past tense production NO Diminutive production NO Experimental task Elicited past tense and diminutive Existing verbs (N=20)/nouns (N=40) Novel verbs (N=20)/nouns (N=40) Stimuli tested in two sets Standardised tasks Tested phonological processing skills Phonological awareness (CELF-IV) Digit span (CELF-IV) Nonword repetition (Rispens & Baker, 2012) Tested vocabulary skills PPVT Past tense Phonological processing skills significant effect? YES existing NO novel Vocabulary size significant effect? Trend existing NO novel * * Diminutive Phonological processing skills significant effect? YES existing YES novel Vocabulary size significant effect? YES existing NO novel Stimuli Dutch Past tense /də/: After stems ending in a voiced consonant or vowel Ren-de (to run) Aai-de (to pet) /tə/: After stems ending in a voiceless consonant Bak-te (to bake) Knip-te (to cut) Dutch Diminutive Suffixes on nouns: /jə/, /tjə/, /pjə/, /kjə/, /ətjə/ Phonological constraints: Final consonant phonology determines allomorph Boon-tje (bean), huis-je (house), Koning-kje (king) Number of syllables Koning-kje (king), ring-etje (ring) Length of the vowel Boom-pje (tree), bom-etje (bomb) * * Discussion/conclusion Phonological skills and vocabulary size important Large amount of variation But other factors need to be investigated past tense Input? Reasons for no difference between TD and dyslexia diminutive Age difference? Some allomorphs produced less accurately than others Compensation? Next steps: Allomorph analysis Type frequency allomorphs Phonotactic frequency stem + allomorph Phonological composition of the stem Statement regarding Conflict of Interest The authors, Tiffany Boersma, Judith Rispens, Anne Baker and Fred Weerman, declare to not have any conflict of interest regarding this research. Contact: t.a.boersma@uva.nl

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