LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:4 April 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Development of Inflectional Morphology and Its Effect on Reading
Comprehension in Marathi Speaking Children –
A Preliminary Study

Mrs. Madhavi Tambay B.Sc. (AST)
Ms. Neha Nellangara
Ms. Kajol Mutha

Abstract

The purpose of the study was three fold: one, to investigate the developmental trend of inflectional morphemes, second, to study the relation between morphological awareness and reading comprehension and lastly, to compare the development of inflection between genders. Marathi is an inflected and an agglutinative language; where affixes are attached to the root morpheme altering the person, number gender and tense. Marathi has poly-morphemic words and free word order. Hence knowledge of inflection is highly critical for comprehension of Marathi sentences. Sixty participants, thirty males and thirty females, from Grade III and Grade IV, were assessed on morphological awareness by a judgment task. Reading comprehension was assessed by answering questions on a reading passage. Results indicated significant developmental trend in inflectional morphemes from Grade III to Grade IV. Case marker was significant predictor of reading comprehension in grade III. No significant difference was observed between genders. We conclude that awareness of morphological skills improves reading comprehension and children start to read with meaning. The findings of this study and previous research suggest inclusion of assessment of morphological knowledge in early reading evaluation and intervention. It may also contribute to the assessment and intervention of children with learning disabilities.

Keywords: Inflectional morphemes, Marathi, Morphological awareness, Reading comprehension.

Introduction

In recent years, speech-language pathologists and linguists have taken keen interest in studying the effect of various aspects of development of language, which contribute to children’s literacy development.

Phonological awareness, decoding skills and its association to word reading ability and reading comprehension has been studied widely in English, European and Indian languages (Gupta, 2004; Hulme & Snowling, 2009; Nag 2007; Nag & Sircar 2008; Prakash, Rekha, Nigam & Karanth 1993).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Mrs. Madhavi Tambay, B.Sc. (AST)
Assistant Professor
School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University
Dhankawadi Campus,
Katraj
Pune 411043
India
madhavi.tambay@gmail.com

Ms. Neha Nellangara
Intern, BASLP
School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University
Dhankawadi Campus,
Katraj
Pune 411043
India
njose46@gmail.com

Ms. Kajol Mutha
Intern, BASLP
School of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
Bharati Vidyapeeth Deemed University
Dhankawadi Campus,
Katraj
Pune 411043
India
mutha.kajol@yahoo.co.in

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