Use of derivational morphology during reading

This study examines contrasting predictions made by models of the lexicon in which stem morphemes play a central accessing role versus models in which stem morphemes play no particular role. Models which assign an independent role to morphemes predict that derivationally suffixed words have both inhibitive and facilitative effects on the reading process. A reading comprehension task was administered to good and poor high-school-age readers to assess their use of both the lexical-semantic and syntactic information provided by morphemes in derivationally suffixed target words. The subjects appeared to use the stem morpheme of a derivationally suffixed word to establish overall sentence meaning but often did not use the syntactic information contained in the derivational suffix. The failure to use syntactic information in the suffix was significantly greater for lower-ability readers than for those reading at or above grade level. The results offer support for morphologically organized models of the lexicon.