Morphophonological alternations – language skills growth and ravel

Abstract

In the speech development studies, morphonology is seldom considered in the specialist analyses. Generally, it is assumed that an acquisition of words and their phonetically altered derivatives require training and sufficiently frequent exposure of the word. And presumably, individual derivates exhibiting exchanged phonemes must be separately acquired by a child. This significantly extends the pace of acquiring such forms making, at the same time, any child doubtful as to their ability to recognise and apply the appropriate rules.
In the article, various methods of recording selected forms of diminutive words that required alternation come from surveys of pupils and students. The analysis of the material proves that many interviewees experienced difficulties recording derivatives with vowel and consonant alternations inside or at the junction of morphemes. Moreover, reviewed samples clearly indicate hurdles in establishing the sound-phoneme-grapheme relation, recognising the morphological structure of the derivative, and respecting the semantic relations between the root and derivative word. And although morphonological awareness training seems strenuous it simply cannot be ignored in either speech therapy or language education.