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Contributors:
  1. Mark Aronoff

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Description: The spelling of an English word may reflect its part of speech, not just the sounds within it. In two preregistered experiments, we asked whether university students are sensitive to one effect of part of speech that has been observed by linguists: that content words (e.g., the noun inn) must be spelled with at least three letters, whereas function words (e.g., the preposition in) may have only two letters. Participants heard VC (vowel–consonant) and CVC (consonant–vowel–consonant) nonwords that were used as nouns (content words) or prepositions (function words). Participants either spelled the items on their own or chose between options with single and double final consonants (e.g., ib vs. ibb). Participants in the choice task favored final consonant doubling for VCs that were used as nouns. They usually chose single final consonants for VCs that were used as prepositions and for CVCs. Effects of word class were also found in the spelling production task. Final consonant doubling was less common in the production task than the choice task, reflecting participants’ reluctance to produce this relatively uncommon spelling pattern. Our results are not consistent with the view that spellers consider only phonology when constructing spellings for novel items. The results are more consistent with the view that spelling performance reflects the combined influences of multiple patterns, both phonological and nonphonological.

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