Abstract

The present study explores Greek dyslexic children’s ability to identify orthographic violations in the ultimate and the penultimate syllable of derived nouns and pseudo –nouns in nominative and genitive cases of singular and plural number when they were attending grade 6 at primary schools, as well as their progress18 months later. In order to evaluate dyslexics’ orthographic ability to represent the derived words with the appropriate suffixes three tasks were used. The first task involved identification of derived nouns with the violation or no in the penultimate or ultimate syllable in a paper and pencil task. Subjects were to decide whether the word in the second column was a correct derived form of the word presented in the first column. The articles preceding nouns in the second column guided subjects to decide on the general orthographic rule as it notes gender and the number, and words in the first column (verbs or nouns) guided students on the orthography of the penultimate syllable. In the same token, the second task involved identification of the derived pseudo-nouns resulting again from the pseudo words given in the first column. Articles in the second column as well as pseudo-nouns and pseudo-verbs guided the subjects. The third condition examined the use of derived nouns in a sentence completion close test. Subjects used the nouns and the verbs given in blankets to formulate the appropriate derived nouns. Suffixes errors were coded as orthographic processing, phonological processing, combined type and stress omission/misplacement. Eighteen months later the follow up test revealed a significant improvement on the orthography of the derived nouns with consonant change at morpheme boundaries, <i>as well as, on the orthographic rules of the ultimate syllable of the pseudo word tasks.