The study investigates whether comprehension of derived words in text context requires a complete understanding of word parts. It explores comprehension of derived words as a function of learner proficiency and contextual clues. Ninety English-as-a-foreign-language learners at three proficiency levels participated in three successive tests representing three clues conditions, absence of clues, availability of syntactic clues, and availability of syntactic and semantic clues. They had to supply the meaning of 22 derived pseudowords constructed with nonword stems and 22 frequent affixes—for example, stacement, gummful. The meanings of the nonword stems were provided. Test scores were compared by 3 (proficiency level) × 3 (clue condition) analysis of variance with repeated measures. The results showed effects of both variables, proficiency and clues. The largest increase in comprehension scores occurred with the addition of syntactic clues. The results imply that derived forms of familiar base words can be understood even when learners’ receptive morphological knowledge is not complete.

该研究调查了在文本上下文中理解派生词是否需要完全理解单词的各个部分。它探索了对派生词的理解作为学习者熟练程度和上下文线索的函数。九十名处于三个熟练程度水平的英语作为外语学习者参加了三个连续的测试，分别代表三种线索条件：线索缺失、句法线索可用性以及句法和语义线索可用性。他们必须提供 22 个由非词词干和 22 个频繁词缀构成的派生伪词的含义，例如stace ment、gummy ful。提供了非词词干的含义。测试分数通过重复测量的 3（熟练程度）× 3（线索条件）方差分析进行比较。结果显示了变量、熟练程度和线索的影响。理解分数的最大提高发生在句法线索的添加上。结果表明，即使学习者接受的词法知识不完整，熟悉的基本词的派生形式也可以被理解。