The IRMA Community
Newsletters
Research IRM
Click a keyword to search titles using our InfoSci-OnDemand powered search:
|
Vocabulary, Morphology, and Context: How Monolingual and Bilingual Children Infer Meaning From Pseudowords
Abstract
This study examines how monolingual (ML) Greek-speaking and Greek–Turkish bilingual (BL) children infer unfamiliar word meanings from context, focusing on vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, and language proficiency, and whether they use morphological cues. Sixty children (30 MLs; 30 BLs, divided by proficiency) completed tasks assessing vocabulary, sentence repetition, morphological awareness and word inference using pseudowords in short stories. Results showed that high-proficiency bilinguals relied on morphological awareness to infer word meanings, while low-proficiency bilinguals depended more on vocabulary depth. Monolinguals outperformed bilinguals overall, but high-proficiency bilinguals matched them on less demanding tasks (depth of VK and morphological decomposition). Morphological cues (e.g., suffixes) significantly enhanced word inference accuracy in high-proficiency bilinguals and monolinguals, whereas low-proficiency bilinguals struggled with both morphological cues and context, resulting in limited lexical inference abilities.
Related Content
|
Dimitra Sitareniou, Marilena Mousoulidou.
© 2026.
38 pages.
|
|
Elena Elia, Marilena Mousoulidou, Loukia Taxitari.
© 2026.
32 pages.
|
|
Ioannis Galantomos.
© 2026.
34 pages.
|
|
Efthymia Efthymiou, Maria Sofologi, Alexandros Argyriadis, Agathi Argyriadi.
© 2026.
28 pages.
|
|
Zoe Gavriilidou.
© 2026.
30 pages.
|
|
Ifigeneia Dosi.
© 2026.
24 pages.
|
|
Evangelos Mantsos, Kalliopi Megari, Agathi Argyriadi, Alexandros Argyriadis, Georgios Α. Kougioumtzis, Efthymia Efthymiou, Ilias Vasileiou, Miltiadis Karvounis, Maria Theodoratou.
© 2026.
20 pages.
|
|
|