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

英语是一种既难读又难拼的语言。写得相似的单词通常发音不同(比较一下Bush和lush)。此外，发音相似的单词在写作中通常有不同的表现形式(比较field和Feel)。然而，英语是世界上使用最广泛的语言。学习用英语(母语或外语)读写的儿童和成人必须应对这种复杂性。关于识字习得的跨语言研究一直表明，说英语的儿童在阅读和拼写方面会犯很多错误，并且落后于学习其他欧洲语言阅读的同龄人(Seymour等人，2003年)。然而，英语在拼写和发音之间确实有重要的规律。近年来进行了大量的研究工作，以了解这些规律，并教导学习者利用这些规律来支持他们的识字发展。这项研究对识字教学有很大的启示，并推动了英国学校系统语音教学的实施(Rose，2006)。本项目关注的是一种相对较少受到研究关注的规律--正字法和词法之间的规律。事实证明，如果一个单词的语法类别已知(名词、形容词)，就可以预测其拼写的各个方面。例如，如果听到一个以“ick”结尾的形容词，那么几乎可以肯定正确的拼写是-ic(例如宇宙)。相反，如果这个词不是形容词，那么它可能有不同的拼写(例如，-ik，beatnik)。这种规律性在几十年前就被描述过了，但最近的证据表明，它在英语中随处可见(Berg&Aronoff，2015)。有趣的是，拼写和语法分类之间的系统性是拼写所独有的；单词的口语形式并不携带这种有意义的信息。有没有可能人类无意识地利用这种以英语拼写加密的形态信息？我们将在熟练的成人读者中进行一系列五项实验调查，以找出是否如此，使用经典的行为学方法，以及尖端的眼球跟踪和单词学习方法。我们的实验将询问参与者是否对拼写与他们的语法课一致的单词表现出增强的阅读能力。我们还将确定参与者是否根据他们在句子中的形态句法角色对口语新词产生不同的拼写。最后，我们将询问参与者是否表现出对拼写与其形态句法功能一致的新词的更好的学习。有技能的读者对拼写和词法之间的规律很敏感，这一发现会引出一个有趣的问题：明确强调这些规律对英语学习者有好处吗？如果是这样的话，从长远来看，我们预计强调拼写和词法之间的规律性可以加强识字教学计划，并为学习阅读和拼写英语的儿童和成年人带来积极的结果。这项工作将由一位在阅读过程中具有专业知识的心理学家(拉斯特尔教授)和一位在词法方面有专业知识的语言学家(Aronoff教授和Stony Brook教授)指导，这两人都是各自领域的国际领先者。因此，我们建议心理学和语言学学科之间的国际合作，这应该会产生新的研究问题和令人惊讶的理论发展。我们预计这项工作将对学术界的几个学科产生强烈的立竿见影的影响。此外，我们还设计了一项与非学术利益攸关方接触的强有力的计划，以确保这项工作在加强扫盲教学方法方面的潜力得到实现。

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.