Morphological awareness and its role in early word reading in English monolinguals, Spanish-English, and Chinese-English simultaneous bilinguals.

ABSTRACT: Words' morphemic structure and their orthographic representations vary across languages. How do bilingual experiences with structurally distinct languages influence children's morphological processes for word reading? Focusing on English literacy in monolinguals and bilinguals (N = 350, ages 5-9), we first revealed unique contributions of derivational ( friend-li-est) and compound (girl-friend) morphology to early word reading. We then examined mechanisms of bilingual transfer in matched samples of Spanish-English and Chinese-English dual first language learners. Results revealed a principled cross-linguistic interaction between language group (Spanish vs. Chinese bilinguals) and type of morphological awareness. Specifically, bilinguals' proficiency with the type of mo

SUBMITTER: Marks RA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10103835 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature