The role of systematicity between orthography and morphology in reading and writing

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English is a language that is difficult to read and to spell. Words that are written similarly often have different sounds (compare bush and lush). Further, words that sound similar are often represented differently in writing (compare field and feel). Yet, English is the most widely spoken language in the world. Children and adults learning to read and write in English (in their mother tongue or foreign language) must cope with this complexity. Cross-linguistic studies on literacy acquisition have consistently shown that English-speaking children make many errors in reading and spelling and lag behind their peers who learn to read in other European languages (Seymour et al., 2003). However, English does have important regularities between spelling and sound. Substantial research effort has been undertaken in recent years to understand these regularities, and to teach learners to capitalise on them to support their literacy development. This research has had powerful implications for literacy teaching, and has motivated the implementation of systematic phonics instruction in UK schools (Rose, 2006).This project focuses on a different kind of regularity that has received relatively little research attention -- that between orthography and morphology. It turns out that one can predict aspects of a word's spelling if its grammatical class is known (noun, adjective). For example, if one hears an adjective that ends in the sound "ick", then one can almost be sure that the correct spelling is -ic (e.g. cosmic). Conversely, if this word is not an adjective, then it is likely to have a different spelling (for example, -ik, beatnik). Such regularity was described decades ago, but more recent evidence has shown that it is ubiquitous in English (Berg & Aronoff, 2015). Interestingly, systematicity between orthography and grammatical class is unique to spelling; the spoken forms of words do not carry this meaningful information. Is it possible that humans unconsciously make use of this morphological information encrypted in English spelling? We will conduct a series of five experimental investigations in skilled adult readers to find out whether this is so, using classic behavioural, as well as cutting-edge eye-tracking and word learning methods. Our experiments will ask whether participants show enhanced reading of words whose spelling accords with their grammatical class. We will also determine whether participants produce different spellings for spoken novel words depending on their morpho-syntactic role in a sentence. Finally, we will ask whether participants show superior learning of novel words that are spelled consistently with their morpho-syntactic function. The finding that skilled readers are sensitive to regularities between spelling and morphology would lead to an intriguing question: is explicit emphasis of these regularities beneficial for learners of English? If so, in the longer term, we expect that highlighting the regularities between spelling and morphology could enhance literacy instruction programmes, and yield positive outcomes for children and adults learning to read and spell English.This work will be guided by a psychologist with expertise in the processes that underpin reading (Prof. Rastle) and a linguist with expertise in morphology (Prof. Aronoff, Stony Brook), both of whom are international leaders in their fields. Thus, we propose an international collaboration between the disciplines of psychology and linguistics, which should give rise to novel research questions and surprising theoretical developments. We expect this work to have a strong immediate impact on several disciplines within academia. Further, we have designed a strong programme of engagement with non-academic stakeholders to ensure that this work's potential for enhancing methods for literacy instruction is realised.