Development of early morphological awareness in Greek: Epilinguistic versus metalinguistic and inflectional versus derivational awareness

Abstract

This cross-sectional study examined the development of morphological awareness in Greek children 4–7 years old. A distinction was adopted between epilinguistic control, evidenced in judgment tasks and indicative of elementary levels of awareness, and metalinguistic awareness, evidenced in production tasks and indicative of full-blown conscious awareness. The morphological domains of inflectional and derivational morphology were specifically contrasted to determine whether they follow distinct developmental trajectories. Trial-level performance data from 236 children in four morphological awareness tasks as a function of age were modeled using generalized additive models. Significant performance increase with age was found for all four awareness tasks. The results further indicated that production of derivational morphemes was consistently more difficult than production of inflectional morphemes and judgment of derivational morphemes, whereas the differences between the two inflectional and between the two judgment tasks were not significant. This suggests that at these ages, epilinguistic control is similarly effective for the two morphological domains whereas full metalinguistic awareness of derivational morphology trails behind that of inflectional morphology, at least as measured by these specific tasks. The findings highlight the need for early tracking and finer distinctions within the domain of morphological awareness, to identify and potentially enhance the critical skills related to the development of vocabulary and reading comprehension.

Preschool Phonological and Morphological Awareness As Longitudinal Predictors of Early Reading and Spelling Development in Greek

“…In contrast, metalinguistic awareness refers to the individual’s ability to reflect upon and consciously manipulate morphemes, as well as the ability to deliberately apply word formation rules. Following Carlisle (1995), epilinguistic control is evidenced in judgment tasks, whereas full-blown metalinguistic awareness is evidenced in production tasks (see Diamanti et al, in press, for further discussion). In addition to the expected performance increase with age, Diamanti et al (in press) found that a single factor sufficed and accounted for 0.59 of the variance in the four tasks, consistent with a common developmental path underlying both domains and both levels of morphological awareness.…”

“…Following Carlisle (1995), epilinguistic control is evidenced in judgment tasks, whereas full-blown metalinguistic awareness is evidenced in production tasks (see Diamanti et al, in press, for further discussion). In addition to the expected performance increase with age, Diamanti et al (in press) found that a single factor sufficed and accounted for 0.59 of the variance in the four tasks, consistent with a common developmental path underlying both domains and both levels of morphological awareness. In comparison of the developmental growth curves among tasks, they found that production of derivational morphemes was more difficult than production of inflectional morphemes and judgment of derivational morphemes, whereas the differences between the two inflectional tasks and between the two judgment tasks were not significant.…”

“…Given these findings, Diamanti et al (in press) suggested that at these ages epilinguistic control is similarly effective for the two morphological domains whereas full metalinguistic awareness of derivational morphology trails behind that of inflectional morphology, at least as measured by these specific tasks. Thus, on the one hand, this study highlighted the need for early tracking and distinctions among levels and domains of morphological awareness.…”

“…Diamanti et al (in press) recently examined the development of morphological awareness in Greek children 4–7 years old. They compared the domains of inflectional and derivational morphology, adopting a distinction between two levels, namely epilinguistic control and metalinguistic awareness.…”

“…This subsection is reproduced from Diamanti et al (in press). Greek is a language with rich inflectional and derivational morphology (see Ralli, 2003) and relatively consistent orthography (Protopapas and Vlahou, 2009).…”